y mother took
over the charge of the house and the chillun for young Master and we
was all purty happy after that.

They was a white man come into our settlement and bought a plantation
and some slaves. My, but he treated them bad. He owned a boy about
fifteen years old. One day he sent him on a errand. On the way home he
got off his mule and set down in the shade of a tree to rest. He fell
asleep and the mule went home. When he woke up he was scared to go
home and he stayed out in de woods for several days. Finally they
caught him and took him home and his master beat him nearly to death.
He then dug a hole and put him in it and piled corn shucks all around
him. This nearly killed him 'cause his body was cut up so with the
whip. One of the niggers slipped off and went to the jining plantation
and told about the way the boy was being treated and a bunch of white
men came over and made him take the child out and doctor his wounds.
This man lived there about ten years and he was so mean to his slaves
'til all the white men round who owned niggers finally went to him and
told him they would just give him so long to sell out and leave. They
made him sell his slaves to people there in the community, and he went
back north.

My mother told me that he owned a woman who was the mother of several
chillun and when her babies would get about a year or two of age he'd
sell them and it would break her heart. She never got to keep them.
When her fourth baby was born and was about two months old she just
studied all the time about how she would have to give it up and one
day she said, "I just decided I'm not going to let old Master sell
this baby; he just ain't going to do it." She got up and give it
something out of a bottle and purty soon it was dead. 'Course didn't
nobody tell on her or he'd of beat her nearly to death. There wasn't
many folks that was mean to their slaves.

Old Master's boys played with the nigger boys all the time. They'd go
swimming, fishing and hunting together. One of his boys name was
Robert but everybody called him Bud. They all would catch rabbits and
mark them and turn them loose. One day a boy come along with a rabbit
he had caught in a trap. Old Master's boy noticed that it had Bud's
mark on it and they made him turn it loose.

Old Master was his own overseer, but my daddy was the overlooker. He
was purty hard on them too, as they had to work just like they never
got tired. The women had to do house