in the stomach
and look them over and if they thought they would have children fast
they brought a good price.

"Just before the war started when the birds would sing around the well,
Missus would say, 'War is coming, them birds singing is a sign of war;
the Yankees will come and kill us all.' I can see the old well now jest
as plain. It had a sweep and pole. You pulled the sweep over by
pulling the pole and bucket down into the well. When it sunk into the
water, the heavy sweep pulled it up again.

"I wouldn't tell anything wrong on my ole marster for anything. He was
good to all of us. He offered my mother a piece of land after the war
closed, but mother's husband would not let her accept it. My
grandmother took a place he offered her. He gave her fifty acres of
land and put a nice frame building on it.

"The man we belonged to never was married. He bought a woman who had
two little girls, on [TR: one] named Lucy and the other Abbie. He took
Lucy for a house girl to wait on his mother. She had eleven children by
him. They're all dead except one. All the missus I ever had was a
slave, and she was this same Lucy. Yes, sir he loved that woman, and
when he died he left all his property to her.

"When the slaves on the plantation got sick they relied mostly on
herbs. They used sage tea for fever, poplar bark water for chills.

"When the husbands and brothers and sweethearts were gone to the war
the white ladies would sing. Annie Ellis and Mag Thomas would sing
these pitiful songs. 'Adieu my friends, I bid you adieu, I'll hang my
heart on the willow tree and may the world go well with you.'

"When I was three years old I remember hearing this song. 'Old
Beauregard and Jackson came running down to Manassas, I couldn't tell
to save my life which one could run the fastest, Hurray boys, hurray!'

"When the surrender came the Yankees rocked the place where we were in.
We were in a box car. They wanted to get a light-colored slave out.

"The Yankee officers came and gave mother's husband a gun and told him
to shoot anyone who bothered us. They put a guard around the car, and
they walked around the car all night.

"My mother was dipping snuff when the Yankees came. One rode up to her
and said, 'Take that stick out of your mouth.' Mother was scared when
the Yankees tried to break in on us. She cried and hollered murder! and
I cried too. I din't know about freedom. I was too young to realize
much about it. When the war en