about dese white
folks, but some of 'em, when they died, left their property to
mulattoes, or half-breed children, and several of them are living in
this community now. I can tell you exactly where they are, and where
they got their property. Some of them are over half white. They were by
a Negro woman who wuz a mulatto and a white man. Dey air so near white
you can't tell them from white folks. This condition has existed as
long ago as I have any recollection, and it still exists, but there
are not as many children according to the relations as used to be.

"Free Negroes were not allowed to go on the plantations much. Now you
see my father wuz a free man. We lived right here in town. My father
wuz a ditcher and slave gitter. One night the man he worked for got up
a crowd and come to whup him and take his money away from him. He had
paid father off that day. Dat night dey come an' got him an'
blindfolded him. He moved the blindfold from over his eyes and run an'
got away from 'em. He never did go back o [TR: no] more to the man he
had been workin' for. I wuz a little boy, but I heard pappy tell it.
Dat wuz tereckly after de surrender. Pappy saw the man he had been
workin' for when he slipped the blindfold off his face, and he knowed
him.

"I wuz a boy when the Yankees came to Raleigh. They came in on the
Fayetteville Road. They stopped and quartered at the edge of the town.
I remember they had a guardhouse to put the Yankees in who disobeyed.
Later on they came in from the east and quartered at the old Soldiers
Home right in there, but not in the buildings. There were no houses
there when the Yankees came. They had some houses there. They built
'em. They stayed there a good while until all the Yankees left. When
the Yankees first came in they camped over near Dix Hill, when they
come into town you hardly knew where they come from. They were jist
like blue birds. They jist covered the face of the earth. They came to
our house and took our sumpin' to eat. Yes sir, they took our sumpin'
to eat from us Negroes. My daddy didn't like deir takin' our rations so
he went to de officer and tole him what his men had done, and the
officers had sumpin' to eat sent over there.

"My mammy cooked some fur de officers too. Dey had a lot of crackers.
Dey called 'em hard tack. The officers brought a lot of 'em over dere.
We lived near the Confederate trenches jist below the Fayetteville
Crossin' on Fayetteville Street. The breastworks