e was a great big double jointed
man, and was black as the ace of spades. No, mam, I never saw any slaves
sold, but my father's mother and his sister were sold on the block. The
white folks that bought 'em took them away. After the war was over my
father tried to locate 'em, but never once did he get on the right track
of 'em.

"Oh! Why, my white folks took a great deal of pains teaching their
slaves how to read and write. My father could read, but he never learned
to write, and it was from our white folks that I learned to read and
write. Slaves read the Bible more than anything else. There were no
churches for slaves on Marse George's plantation, so we all went to the
white folks' church, about two miles away; it was called Clarke's
Chapel. Sometimes we went to church at Cross Roads; that was about the
same distance across Sugar Fork River. My mother was baptized in that
Sugar Fork River by a white preacher, but that is the reason I joined
the Baptist church, because my mother was a Baptist, and I was so crazy
about her, and am 'til yet.

"There were no funeral parlors in those days. They just funeralized the
dead in their own homes, took them to the graveyard in a painted
home-made coffin that was lined with thin bleaching made in the loom on
the plantation, and buried them in a grave that didn't have any bricks
or cement about it. That brings to my memory those songs they sung at
funerals. One of them started off something like this, _I Don't Want You
to Grieve After Me_. My mother used to tell me that when she was
baptized they sung, _You Shall Wear a Lily-White Robe_. Whenever I get
to studying about her it seems to me I can hear my mother singing that
song again. She did love it so much.

"No, mam, there didn't none of the darkies on Marse George Sellar's
place run away to the North, but some on Marse Tommy Angel's place ran
to the West. They told me that when Little Charles Angel started out to
run away a bird flew in front of him and led him all the way to the
West. Understand me, I am not saying that is strictly so, but that is
what I heard old folks say, when I was young. When darkies wanted to get
news to their girls or wives on other plantations and didn't want Marse
George to know about it, they would wait for a dark night and would tie
rags on their feet to keep from making any noise that the paterollers
might hear, for if they were caught out without a pass, that was
something else. Paterollers would