t into chunks and issued from the smoke house.
Potash was secured from the ashes of burnt oak wood and allowed to set
in a quantity of grease that had also been saved for the purpose, then
boiled into soap.

The cotton was gathered in bags of bear grass and deposited in baskets
woven with strips of white oak that had been dried in the sun.

Willis remembers the time when a slave on the plantation escaped and
went north to live. This man managed to communicate with his family
somehow, and it was whispered about that he was "living very high" and
actually saving money with which to buy his family. He was even going to
school. This fired all the slaves with an ambition to go north and this
made them more than usually interested in the outcome of the war between
the states. He was too young to fully understand the meaning of freedom
but wanted very much to go away to some place where he could earn
enough money to buy his mother a real silk dress. He confided this
information to her and she was very proud of him but gave him a good
spanking for fear he expressed this desire for freedom to his young
master or mistress.

Prayer meetings were very frequent during the days of the war and very
often the slaves were called in from the fields and excused from their
labors so they could hold these prayer meetings, always praying God for
the safe return of their master.

The master did not return after the war and when the soldiers in blue
came through that section the frightened women were greatly dependent
upon their slaves for protection and livelihood. Many of these black man
chose loyalty to their dead masters to freedom and shouldered the burden
of the support of their former mistresses cheerfully.

After the war Willis' father was one of those to remain with his widowed
mistress. Other members of his family left as soon as they were freed,
even his wife. They thus remained separated until her death.

Willis saw his first bedspring about 50 years ago and he still thinks a
feather mattress superior to the store-bought variety. He recalls a
humorous incident which occurred when he was a child and had been
introduced for the first time to the task of picking a goose.

After demonstrating how it was done to a group of slave children, the
person in charge had gone about his way leaving them busily engaged in
picking the goose. They had been told that the one gathering the most
feathers would receive a piece of money. Sometime