pigs and want me to catch
them and I wouldn't do it. He tried to beat me up and when we git to the
lot we have to go round to the big gate and he had a pine knot, and he
catch me in the gate and hit me with that knot. Old Captain sittin' on
the gallery and he seed it all. When he heered the story he whipped
young master and the old lady, she ain't like it.

"One time after that she sittin' in the yard knittin' and she throwed
her knittin' needle off and call me to come git it. I done forgot she
wanter whip me and when I bring the needle she grab me and I pull away
but she hold on my shirt. I run round and round and she call her mother
and they catch and whip me. My shirt just had one button on it and I was
pullin' and gnawin' on that button and directly it come off and the
whole shirt pull off and I didn't have nothin' on but my skin. I run and
climb up on the pole at the gate and sot there till master come. He say,
'Carey, why you sittin' up there?' Then I tell him the whole
transaction. I say, 'Missus, she whip me 'cause young marse John git
whip that time and not me.' He make me git down and git up on his horse
behin' him and ride up to the big house. Old missus, she done went to
the house and go to bed with her leg, 'cause when she whippin' me she
stick my head 'tween her knees and when she do that I bit her.

"Old master's house was two-story with galleries. My mother, she work in
the big house and she have a purty good house to live in. It was a plank
house, too, but all the other houses was make out of hewed logs. Then my
father was a carpenter and old master let him have lumber and he make he
own furniture out of dressed lumber and make a box to put clothes in. We
never did have more'n two changes of clothes.

"My father used to make them old Carey plows and was good at makin' the
mould board out of hardwood. He make the best Carey plows in that part
of the country and he make horseshoes and nails and everything out of
iron. And he used to make spinning wheels and parts of looms. He was a
very valuable man and he make wheels and the hub and put the spokes in.

"Old master had a big farm and he raised cotton and corn and 'taters and
peanuts and sorghum cane and some ribbon cane. The bigges' crops was
cotton and corn.

"My father told us when freedom come. He'd been a free man, 'cause he
was bodyguard to the old, old master and when he died he give my father
he freedom. That was over in Richmond, Virginia. But