y uncommon the the Hale plantation. Sometimes Mr. Hale
had to resort to this form of punishment for disobedience on the part of
some of the servants. Mrs. McDaniel says that she was whipped many times
but only once with the cowhide. Nearly every time that she was whipped a
switch was used. She has seen her mother as well as some of the others
punished but they were never beaten unmercifully. Neither she or any of
the other slaves on the Hale plantation ever came in contact with the
"Paddie-Rollers," whom they knew as a group of white men who went around
whipping slaves who were caught away from their respective homes without
passes from their masters. When asked about the buying and the selling
of slaves Mrs. McDaniel said that she had never witnessed an auction at
which slaves were being sold and that the only thing she knew about this
was what she had been told by her mother who had been separated from her
husband and sold in Georgia. Mr. Hale never had the occasion to sell any
of those slaves that he held.
Mrs. McDaniel remembers nothing of the talk that transpired between the
slaves or her owners at the beginning of the war. She says: "I was a
little girl, and like the other children then, I didn't have as much
sense as the children of today who are of the age that I was then. I do
remember that my master moved somewhere near Macon, Georgia after
General Wheeler marched through. I believe that he did more damage than
the Yanks did when they came through. When my master moved us along with
his family we had to go out of the way a great deal because General
Wheeler had destroyed all of the bridges. Besides this he damaged a
great deal of the property that he passed." Continuing, Mrs. McDaniel
said: "I didn't see any of the fighting but I did hear the firing of the
cannons. I also saw any number of Confederate soldiers pass by our
place." Mr. Hale didn't join the army although his oldest son did.
At the time that the slaves were freed it meant nothing in particular to
Mrs. McDaniel, who says that she was too young to pay much attention to
what was happening. She never saw her father after they moved away from
Watsonville. At any rate she and her mother remained in the service of
Mr. Hale for a number of years after the war. In the course of this time
Mr. Hale grew to be a wealthy man. He continued to be good to those
servants who remained with him. After she was a grown woman Mrs.
McDaniel left Mr. Hale as she was th
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