d to pick
splinters out of his back. My father had to slip off a night to come
and visit us. He lived a mile and a half from our house on the south
side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and it sho' is a rocky country. He'd
oversleep hisself and git up running. We would stand in our door and
hear him running over them rocks til he got home. He was trying to git
dere before his master called him.

It was a law among the slave-holders that if you left your master's
place, you had to have a pass, for if the patroller caught you without
one, he would give you 9 and 30 lashes and carry you to your master,
and if he was mean, you got the same again!

On the 3-foot fireplace my mother and father cooked ash cakes and my
father having to run to work, had to wash his cakes off in a spring
betwixt our house and his. My mother was the cook in the Big House.

All the time we would see "nigger traders" coming through the country.
I have seen men and women cuffed to 60-foot chains being took to
Lynchburg, Va., to the block to be sold. Now I am talking 'bout what I
know, for it would not mean one thing for me to lie. I ain't jest
heard dis. My uncle John was a carpenter and always took Mistress'
chillun to school in a two-horse surrey. On sech trips, the chillun
learned my uncle to read and write. Dey slipped and done this, for it
was a law among slave-holders that a slave not be caught wid a book.

One morning when I was on my way to de mill with a sack of corn, I had
to go down de main pike. I saw sech a fog 'til I rid close enough to
see what was gwine on. I heard someone say "close up." I was told
since dat it was Hood's Raid. They took every slave that could carry a
gun. It was at dis time, Negroes went into de service. Lee was
whipping Grant two battles to one 'til them raids, and den Grant
whipped Lee two battles to one, 'cause he had Negroes in the Union
Army. Dey took Negroes and all de white people's food. Dey killed
chickens and picked dem on horseback. I never will forgit that time
long as I live.

Ever day I had to get the mail for three families. I carried it around
in a bag and each family took his'n out. I guess I was one of the
first Negro mailmen.

We had church on the place and had right good meetings. Everybody went
and took part in the service. We had to have passes to go off the
place to the meetings.

The children wore just one garment from this time of year (spring)
till the frost fell. Mistress' daughters m