led us to the
house. He pulled out a paper and read it to us, and then he said: 'You
all are free, as I am.' We couldn't help thinking about what a good
marster he always had been, and how old, and feeble, and gray headed he
looked as he kept on a-talkin' that day. 'You all can stay on here with
me if you want to,' he 'lowed, 'but if you do, I will have to pay you
wages for your work.'

"I never saw no Yankees in Athens, but I was in Atlanta at Mrs.
Winship's on Peachtree Street, when General Sherman come to that town
'parin' his men for to go home. There was about two thousand in all,
white and black. They marched up and down Marietta Street from three
o'clock in the evening 'til seven o'clock next morning. Then they left.
I remember well that there warn't a house left standing in Atlanta, what
warn't riddled with shell holes. I was scared pretty nigh to death and I
never want to leave home at no time like that again. But Pa saw 'em soon
after that in Athens. They was a marching down Broad Street on their way
to Macon, and Pa said it looked like a blue cloud going through.

"Ma and me stayed on with Marse Billy 'bout six months after the War
ended before we come to town to live with Pa. We lived right back of
Rock College and Ma took in washin' for the folks what went to school
there. No, Ma'am I never saw no Ku Kluxers. Me and Ma didn't leave home
at night and the white folks wouldn't let 'em git Pa.

"Major Knox brought three or four teachers to teach in a school for
Negroes that was started up here the first year after the War. Major
Knox, he was left like a sort of Justice of Peace to get things to going
smooth after the War. I went to school there about three months, then Ma
took sick, and I didn't go no more. My white teacher was Miss Sarah, and
she was from Chicago.

"Now and then the Negroes bought a little land, and white folks gave
little places to some Negroes what had been good slaves for 'em.

"I didn't take in about Mr. Abraham Lincoln. A long time after the War,
I heard 'em say he got killed. I knowed Mr. Jeff. Davis was President of
the Confederacy. As for Booker Washington, I never saw him, but I heard
his son whan he was here once and gave a musical of some sort at the
Congregational Church.

"I was a old gal when I married 'bout thirty or forty years after the
War. I married George McIntosh. Wedding clothes!" she chuckled, and
said: "I didn't have many. I bought 'em second hand from Mrs. Ed. Bo