nds dead and I sets here twice a widow, and I wonders how
'twill be when I go home up yonder 'bove them white thunder heads us can
see right now. Which one them men you reckon I'll see first? Well, if it
be dat way, 'spect I'll just want to see Cupid first, 'cause he was de
only one I had chillun by, and them his grandchillun out yonder."

=Project #1655=
=W.W. Dixon=
=Winnsboro, S.C.=

=ROBERT TOATLEY=

=_EX-SLAVE 82 YEARS OLD._=

Robert Toatley lives with his daughter, his son, his son's wife, and
their six children, near White Oak, seven miles north of Winnsboro, S.C.
Robert owns the four-room frame house and farm containing 235 acres. He
has been prosperous up from slavery, until the boll weevil made its
appearance on his farm and the depression came on the country at large,
in 1929. He has been compelled to mortgage his home but is now coming
forward again, having reduced the mortgage to a negligible balance,
which he expects to liquidate with the present 1937 crop of cotton.

Robert is one of the full blooded Negroes of pure African descent. His
face, in repose, possesses a kind of majesty that one would expect in
beholding a chief of an African tribe.

"I was born on de 'Lizabeth Mobley place. Us always called it 'Cedar
Shades'. Dere was a half mile of cedars on both sides of de road leading
to de fine house dat our white folks lived in. My birthday was May 15,
1855. My mistress was a daughter of Dr. John Glover. My master married
her when her was twelve years old. Her first child, Sam, got to be a
doctor, and they sho' did look lak brother and sister. When her oldest
child, Sam, come back from college, he fetched a classmate, Jim
Carlisle, wid him. I played marbles wid them. Dat boy, Jim, made his
mark, got 'ligion, and went to de top of a college in Spartanburg. Marse
Sam study to be a doctor. He start to practice and then he marry Miss
Lizzie Rice down in Barnwell. Mistress give me to them and I went wid
them and stayed 'til freedom.

"My childhood was a happy one, a playin' and a rompin' wid de white
chillun. My master was rich. Slaves lived in quarters, 300 yards from de
big house. A street run through the quarters, homes on each side. Beds
was homemade. Mattresses made of wheat straw. Bed covers was quilts and
counter-panes, all made by slave women.

"My mammy's pappy was a slave brick-mason, b'longin' to a white family
named Partillo, from Warrington, Virginia. He couldn't be bought 'l