re. He states that Campbell exceeded this
amount in the division later.

After 'surrinder' Thomas and his relatives remained on the Campbell
place, working for $5 a month, payable at each Christmas. He recalls how
rich he felt with this money, as compared with the other free Negroes in
the section. All of the children and his mother were paid this amount,
he states.

The old man remembers very clearly the customs that prevailed both
before and after his freedom. On the plantation, he says, they never
faced actual want of food, although his meals were plain. He ate mostly
corn meal and bacon, and squash and potatoes, he adds "and every now and
then we'd eat more than that." He doesn't recall exactly what, but says
it was "Oh, lots of greens and cabbage and syrul, and sometimes plenty
of meat too."

His mother and the other women were given white cotton--he thinks it may
have been duck--dresses "every now and then", he states, but none of the
women really had to confine themselves to white, "cause they'd dye 'em
as soon as they'd get 'em." For dye, he says they would boil wild
indigo, poke berries, walnuts and some tree for which he has an
undecipherable name.

Campbell's slaves did not have to go barefoot--not during the colder
months, anyway. As soon as winter would come, each one of them was given
a pair of bright, untanned leather "brogans," that would be the envy of
the vicinity. Soap for the slaves was made by the women of the
plantation; by burning cockle-burrs, blackjack wood and other materials,
then adding the accumulated fat of the past few weeks. For light they
were given tallow candles. Asked if there was any certain time to put
the candles out at night, Thomas answers that "Mr. Campbell didn't care
how late you stayed up at night, just so you was ready to work at
daybreak."

The ex-slave doesn't remember any feathers in the covering for his
pallet in the corner of his cabin, but says that Mr. Campbell always
provided the slaves with blankets and the women with quilts.

By the time he was given his freedom, Thomas had learned several trades
in addition to farming; one of them was carpentry. When he eventually
left his $5 a month job with his master, he began travelling over the
state, a practice he has not discontinued until the present. He worked,
he says, "in such towns as Perry, Sarasota, Clearwater and every town in
Florida down to where the ocean goes under the bridge." (Probably Key
West.)

He