FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67  
68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   >>   >|  
dn't. They would carry you to the pateroles and get pay for you, and the pateroles would turn you over to the owners. You had to have a pass. If you didn't the pateroles would catch you and wear you out, keep you till the next morning, and then send you home by the jayhawkers. They didn't call them that though, they called them bushwhackers. "The Ku Klux came after the War. They was the same thing as the pateroles--they come out from them. I know where the Ku Klux home is over here on Eighteenth and Broadway. That is where they broke up. It ain't never been open since. (Not correct--ed.) "I saw the Yankees come in the yard on the Webb place. That was in the time of the War. The old man got on his horse and flew. The Yankees went in the smokehouse, broke it open, got all the meat they wanted. They didn't pay you nothing in slavery time. But what meat the Yankees didn't take for themselves, they give to the niggers. "My folks never got anything for their work that I know of. I heard my mother say that nobody got paid for their work. I don't know whether they had a chance to make anything on the side or not. "The Yankees, when they come in the yard that morning, told my father he was free. I remember that myself. They come up riding horses and carryin' long old guns with bayonets on them, and told him. They rode all over the country from one place to another telling the niggers they were free. Master didn't get a chance to tell us because he left when he saw them comin'. "When my mother and father were living on the plantation, they lived in an old frame building. A portion of it was log. My father stayed with the Calverts--his wife's white folks. At first old man Webb sold him to them; then he bought him back and bought my mother too. They were together when freedom came. You know they auctioned you off in slavery time. Every year, they would, they put you up on the auction block and buy and sell. That was down in Georgia. We was in Georgia when we was freed--in Atlanta. My father and mother had fourteen children altogether. My mother died the year after we came out here. That would be about 1875. I never had but three children because my wife died early. Two of them are dead. "Right after freedom, my father plaited baskets and mats. He shucked mops, put handles on rakes and did things like that in addition to his farming. He was a blacksmith all the time too. He used to plait collars for mules. He farmed and
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67  
68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

mother

 

father

 

pateroles

 

Yankees

 
children
 

freedom

 

chance

 

bought

 

Georgia

 

slavery


niggers

 

morning

 

addition

 
farming
 
blacksmith
 
collars
 

farmed

 

living

 

plantation

 

building


altogether

 

Calverts

 

stayed

 
portion
 

fourteen

 

Atlanta

 
handles
 
auctioned
 

auction

 
baskets

plaited
 

shucked

 
things
 

Eighteenth

 
Broadway
 

bushwhackers

 

correct

 
called
 

owners

 

jayhawkers


smokehouse

 
wanted
 

bayonets

 

carryin

 
horses
 

riding

 

country

 

Master

 
telling
 

remember