h the paling fence, and the whole crowd of
us little niggers thought they needed picking. We found an opening on
the lower side of the fence and made our way in, destroying all of those
luscious ripe strawberries. When we had about finished the job, Mistress
saw us, and hollered at us. Did we scatter! In the jam for the fence
hole I was the last one to get through and Mistress had gotten there by
that time and had me by the collar. She took me back to the house, got
the cow hide down, and commenced rubbing it over me. Before she got
through, she cut me all to pieces. I still have signs of those whelps on
me today. In the fight I managed to bite her on the wrist, causing her
to almost bleed to death. I finally got away and ran to a hiding place
of safety. [HW: I] They used soot and other things trying to stop the
bleeding.

"When Marster come home he saw Miss Elizabeth with her hand all bandaged
up, and wanted to know what the trouble was. He was told the story, so
he came out to look for me. He called me out from my hiding place, and
when he saw me with those awful whelps on me, and how pitiful looking I
was, he said, "Elizabeth, you done ruint my little nigger, David." "I
wouldn't have him in this fix for all the strawberries." I was very fond
of strawberries in those days, but that experience put an end forever to
my taste for them. So much for the strawberry business!

"Even a dog [HW: likes] kind treatment. Some days Mistress was good and
kind to us little niggers, and she would save us the cold biscuits to
give us when we brought in the eggs. Sometime, she would go two or three
days without giving us any biscuits then she didn't get no eggs. We
rascals would get up the eggs and go off and have a rock battle with
them. Every effect has a cause--then Miss would wonder why she didn't
get any eggs and call us all in for cold biscuits, then the eggs would
come again. Of course we had our game of "tell". If one of the gang
threatened to tell, then we all would threaten to tell all we knew on
him, and somehow we managed to get by with it all.

"After the war, my father stayed on with Marster Mappin as a cropper
running a two horse farm for himself. In the early 70's my father bought
12 acres of land from Judge Lawson near Eatonton, which was later sold
in lots to different colored people, and became known as Gullinsville,
and is still so called by some.

"In 1876, 26 day of November, I left my folks and came to Milledg