lbro.

"Dr. Heriot after the war took into big drinkin'. Didn't bury so decent.
Fell tru wid all he money. Not bury so decent."

=Source:= Told by Uncle Ben Horry, Age 88, April 1938, Murrells Inlet, S.C.

Project #1655
Everett R. Pierce
Columbia, S.C.

INTERVIEW WITH EX-SLAVE
MARGARET HUGHES, 82 YEARS.

"Missy, I likes to talk to de white folks, I gits awful lonesome for my
massa and missus, and de white folks I used to be wid. Yes'm, I was born
out here 'bout ten miles from Columbia, at a little place called Nipper
Hill. My massa was named Daniel Finley, and my missus was named
Elizabeth, but we called her Missy Betsy. My massa had a big plantation
and a heap of slaves; he had so many he couldn't keep us faces in his
mind. One day he see some of us over on another plantation, and he ask
us who we b'long to, and we tell him, and he just smile and say he
couldn't 'member all of us. De massa and de missus was so good to us
'til de slaves on other plantations was jealous; they call us free
niggers befo' we was freed.

The grown-up slaves had to work in de field all day and then at night
they spin cloth and make their clothes. We had one shoemaker what didn't
do nothing else much 'cept make shoes for all of us. I was too young to
do much work, so the missus mostly keep me in de house to nurse de
chillun. When de chillun go to school, she make me go 'long wid them for
to look after them and tote their books. I stayed wid them all day and
brought their books home in de evening.

I got in trouble one day while I was at de school house; I was a right
bad little gal, anyway. I got mad wid one of de little white chillun
'cause she talk mean to Sissy, dat's one of my missus little girls, and
I took her books and put them in a bucket of water. The teacher punish
me, and told my missus I couldn't come back to de school house, 'less
she teach me how to behave more better. I was right good after that,
'cause I was scared of whippings. My missus had three chillun: Mary, we
call her Sissy 'cause she de oldest, then Sally and Willie. I slept in
de big house and play wid de white chillun. When de white folks went off
in de carriage they always let me go too; I set up in de seat wid de
driver. They had awful pretty horses to drive.

Massa Daniel had a overseer, named Jake Graddick. He kept de slaves at
work and looked after de crops. He woke de slaves every morning by
blowing a big cow horn, and called them