church and have been teaching a
class of boys every Sunday that I'm able to go. I sho am free from sin
and I lives up to it.

"I wonder if Molly's got them sweet 'taters cooked what I dug this
morning. They warn't much 'count 'cause the sun has baked them hard and
it's been so dry. If you is through with me, I wants to go eat one of
them 'taters and then lay this old Nigger on the bed and let him go to
sleep."

[HW: Dist 5]
Josephine Lowell

[HW: ELIZA WILLIAMSON]

[TR: This interview contained many handwritten edits; where text was
transposed or meaning was significantly changed, it has been noted.]

Just a few recollections of life in slavery time, as told me by [TR:
illegible] who was Eliza Taliaferro Williamson, daughter of Dickerson
and Polly Taliaferro. My mother was born at Mt. Airy, North Carolina,
near the Virginia line, and always went to school, across the line, in
Virginia. Her grandfather was John Taliaferro, slave holder, tobacco
raiser, and farmer. The Negro quarters were near the main or Big House.
Mother said that great-grandfather would go to the back door each night
and call every slave to come in for family prayer. They came and knelt
in the Big House, while old marster prayed. Mother said it was like a
camp-meeting when he died--wailing and weeping by the Negroes for their
old Marster. She said the slaves had the same food that the white family
had and the same warm clothes for winter. All clothing, bed sheeting,
table linen, towels, etc. were hand woven. They raised sheep for wool,
and flax for linen, but I don't know where they got the cotton they
used. The work of the house and farm was divided as with a big family.
Some of the women cooked, sewed, wove, washed, milked, but was never
sent to the field. None of the Toliver family believed in women working
in the field. When each of great-grandfather's children married, he or
she was given a few slaves. I think he gave my grandfather, Dickerson
Taliaferro, three slaves, and these he brought with him to Georgia when
they settled in Whitfield County.

My grandfather was a member of the Legislature from Whitfield County for
two terms. He was as gentle with his slaves as a father would have been,
and was never known to abuse one of them. One of his slaves, who was a
small boy at the close of the War, stayed with my grandfather until he
was a grown man, then after a few years away from home, came home to old
Marster to die. This is the p