t, nearby.

In those days, slave owners, whenever one of their daughters would get
married, would give her and her husband a slave as a wedding present,
usually allowing the girl to pick the one she wished to accompany her to
her new home. When Mr. Duret's eldest daughter married Zeke Samples, she
choose my father to accompany them to their home.

Zeke Samples proved to be a man who loved his toddies far better than
his bride and before long he was "broke". Everything he had or owned,
including my father, was to be sold at auction to pay off his debts.

In those days, there were men who made a business of buying up negroes
at auction sales and shipping them down to New Orleans to be sold to
owners of cotton and sugar cane plantations, just as men today, buy and
ship cattle. These men were called "Nigger-traders" and they would ship
whole boat loads at a time, buying them up, two or three here, two or
three there, and holding them in a jail until they had a boat load. This
practice gave rise to the expression, "sold down the river."

My father was to be sold at auction, along with all of the rest of Zeke
Samples' property. Bob Cowherd, a neighbor of Matt Duret's owned my
grandfather, and the old man, my grandfather, begged Col. Bob to buy my
father from Zeke Samples to keep him from being "sold down the river."
Col. Bob offered what he thought was a fair price for my father and a
"nigger-trader" raised his bid "25 [TR: $25?]. Col. said he couldn't
afford to pay that much and father was about to be sold to the
"nigger-trader" when his father told Col. Bob that he had $25 saved
up and that if he would buy my father from Samples and keep the
"nigger-trader" from getting him he would give him the money. Col. Bob
Cowherd took my grandfather's $25 and offered to meet the traders offer
and so my father was sold to him.

The negroes in and around where I was raised were not treated badly, as
a rule, by their masters. There was one slave owner, a Mr. Heady, who
lived nearby, who treated his slave worse than any of the other owners
but I never heard of anything so awfully bad, happening to his
"niggers". He had one boy who used to come over to our place and I can
remember hearing Massa Williams call to my grandmother, to cook
"Christine, give Heady's Doc something to eat. He looks hungry." Massa
Williams always said "Heady's Doc" when speaking of him or any other
slave, saying to call him, for instance, Doc Heady would sound a