e Hagar. I never have seen dem, but my grandmother wuz deir
daughter. Dey had three chillun here in America. My grandmammie and
grandfather told me this. My brothers were name, oldest one, Haywood,
den Lem, an' Peter, an' me, Parker Pool. De girls, oldest girl wuz
Minerva Rilla.

"I had good owners. My missus and master dey took jes as good keer o'
me as they could. Dey wuz good to all de han's. Dey giv' us plenty to
eat, an' we had plenty o' clothes, sich as they wuz, but de wuz no sich
clothes as we have now. Dey treated us good, I will have to say dat.
Dey are dead in their graves, but I will have to say dis fer 'em. Our
houses were in de grove. We called master's house 'de great house'. We
called our homes 'de houses'. We had good places ter sleep.

"We got up at light. I had to do most o' the nursin' o' de chillun,
case when choppin' time come de women had to go to work. We had plenty
ter eat, an' we et it. Our some'in to eat wuz well fixed an' cooked. We
caught a lot o' 'possums, coons an' other game, but I tell yer a coon
is a lot harder to ketch den a possum. We had one garden, an' de
colored people tended the garden, an' we all et out'n it.

"Dere wuz about 2000 acres in de plantation. All de farm lan' wuz
fenced in wid wood rails. De hogs, cows an' stock wuz turned out in de
woods, an' let go. The cows wuz drived home at night, dat is if dey
didn't come up. Dat is so we could milk de ones we wanted ter milk.

"We dug ditches to drain de lan', blin' ditches; we dug 'em an' den put
poles on top, an' covered 'em wid brush an' dirt. We put de brush on de
poles to keep de dirt from runnin' through. Den we ploughed over de
ditches.

"We tanned our leather in a tan trough. We used white oak bark an' red
oak bark. Dey put copperas in it too, I think.

"I knows how to raise flax. You grow it an' when it is grown you pull
it clean up out of de groun' till it kinder rots. Dey have what dey
called a brake, den it wuz broke up in dat. De bark wuz de flax. Dey
had a stick called a swingle stick, made kinder like a sword. Dey used
dis to knock de sticks out o' de flax. Dey would den put de flax on a
hackle, a board wid a lot of pegs in it. Den dey clean an' string it
out till it looks lak your hair. Dey flax when it came from de hackles
wuz ready for de wheel whur it wuz spun into thread. I tell you, you
couldn't break it either.

"When it wuz spun into thread dey put it on a reel. It turned 100 times
and struck, whe