keep
de fever away. She used branch elder twigs and dogwood berries for
chills. Another way to stop chills from coming was to dip a string in
turpentine, keep it tied around de waist and tie a knot in it every time
you had a chill.

"Abraham Lincoln was a good man. Seems like all de niggers loved him
lots. I don't know much about Jefferson Davis. Booker Washington was a
good man. I 'member he was once in Newberry and I heard him preach in de
old courthouse. (?)

"I joined de church when I was 12 years old. In dem days de old folks
made chillun go to church when dey was 12 years old, and join den. Dat
was de reason I joined. I was a Methodist but I joined de Baptist later,
because, well, I saw dat was de right way."

Source: Solomon Caldwell (73), Newberry, S. C. RFD
Interviewer: G. L. Summer, Newberry, S. C. 12/7/37.

Project #1655
W. W. Dixon,
Winnsboro, S. C.

NELSON CAMERON
EX-SLAVE 81 YEARS.

Nelson Cameron and his wife, Mary, together with a widowed daughter,
Rose, and her six children, live in a four-room frame house, two miles
south of Woodward, S. C., about sixty yards east of US highway #21. He
cultivates about eighty acres of land, on shares of the crop, for Mr.
Brice, the land owner. He is a good, respectable, cheerful old darkey,
and devoted to his wife and grandchildren.

"Marse Wood, Ned Walker, a old Gaillard nigger says as how he was down
here t'other day sellin' chickens, where he got them chickens I's not
here for to say, and say you wanna see me. I's here befo' you and pleads
guilty to de charge dat I'm old, can't work much any longer, and is poor
and needy.

"You sees dere's a window pane out of my britches seat and drainage
holes in both my shoes, to let de sweat out when I walks to Bethel
Church on Sunday. Whut can you and Mr. Roosevelt do for dis old
Izrallite a passin' thru de wilderness on de way to de Promise Land? Lak
to have a little manna and quail, befo' I gits to de river Jordan.

"My old marster name Sam Brice. His wife, my mistress, tho' fair as de
lily of de valley and cheeks as pink as de rose of Sharon, is called
'Darkie.' Dat always seem a misfit to me. Lily or Rose or Daisy would
have suited her much more better, wid her laces, frills, flounces, and
ribbons. Her mighty good to de slaves. Take deir part 'ginst de marster
sometime, when him want to whup them. Sometime I sit on de door-steps
and speculate in de moonlight whut de angels am like and e