ce. It was a double wedding, two couples were married.
Georgianna Hawkins was married to George Ross and Steve Carter married a
woman whose name I do not remember. This was in the winter during the
Christmas Holidays and I stayed in the community until about the first
of January, then I went back home. I had been thinking for several days
before I went back home as to just what I must tell Mr. Moore and as to
how he felt about the matter, and what I would get when I got home. In
my dilema I almost forgot I was free.

I got home at night and my mind and heart was full but I was surprised
at the way he treated me. He acted kind and asked me if I was going to
stay with him next year. I was pleased. I told him, yes sir! and then I
lay down and went to sleep. He had a boss man on his plantation then and
next morning he called me, but I just couldn't wake. I seemed to be in a
trance or something, I had recently lost so much sleep. He called me the
second time and still I di [HW: d] not get up. Then he came in and
spanked my head. I jumped up and went to work feeding the stock and
splitting wood for the day's cooking and fires. I then went in and ate
my breakfast. Mr. Moore told me to hitch a team of horses to a wagon and
go to a neighbors five miles away for a load of hogs. I refused to do
so. They called me into the house and asked me what I was going to do
about it. I said I do not know. As I said that I stepped out of the
door and left. I went straight to the county seat and hired to Dr.
George Rasby in Webster County for one hundred dollars per year. I
stayed there one year. I got uneasy in Kentucky. The whites treated the
blacks awful bad so I decided to go to Illinois as I thought a Negro
might have a better chance there, it being a northern state. I was
kindly treated and soon began to save money, but all through the years
there was a thought that haunted me in my dreams and in my waking hours,
and this thought was of my mother, whom I had not seen or heard of in
many years. Finally one cold morning in early December I made a vow that
I was going to North Carolina and see my mother if she was still living.
I had plenty of money for the trip. I wrote the postmaster in Roxboro,
North Carolina, asking him to inform my mother I was still living, and
telling him the circumstances, mailing a letter at the same time telling
her I was still alive but saying nothing of my intended visit to her. I
left Illinois bound for North Ca