end to
Philadelphia to get dat kind of dime."

"I tellin you time hard dese days. I had stroke here en can' work, but I
doin de best I can. Miss Robinson help me daughter do de best she can.
Do washin en ironin. Miss Robinson say she gwine give me old age
pension. I ask Miss Robinson, I say, 'I livin now en can' get nothin. If
I die, would you help my chillun bury me?' She say, 'I will do de best I
can to help put you away nice.' Miss Robinson good lady."

=Source:= Charlie Grant, ex-slave, age 85, Florence, S.C.

Personal interview by H. Grady Davis and Mrs.
Lucile Young, Florence, S.C., May 11, 1937.

Project #-1655
Phoebe Faucette
Hampton County

Folklore

[HW: Grant, Rebecca Jane]
NINETY TWO YEAR OLD NEGRO TELLS OF EARLY LIFE AS SLAVE

In Hampton County at Lena, S.C., there lives an old negro woman who has
just passed her ninety-second birthday, and tells of those days long ago
when man was bound to man and families were torn apart against their
will. Slowly she draws the curtain of Time from those would-be-forgotten
scenes of long ago that cannot ever be entirely obliterated from the
memory.

"Well, just what is it you want to hear about, Missus?"

"Anything, everything, Auntie, that you remember about the old days
before the Civil War. Just what you've told your grand-daughter, May,
and her friend, Alice, here, many times, is what I want to hear."

"Tell her, mamma," said Alice with a whoop of laughter, "about the time
when your Missus sent you to the store with a note!"

"Oh that! Not that Missus?"

"Yes, Auntie that!"

"Well, I was just a little girl about eight years old, staying in
Beaufort at de Missus' house, polishing her brass andirons, and
scrubbing her floors, when one morning she say to me, 'Janie, take this
note down to Mr. Wilcox Wholesale Store on Bay Street, and fetch me back
de package de clerk gie (give) you.'

"I took de note. De man read it, and he say, 'Uh-huh'. Den he turn away
and he come back wid a little package which I took back to de Missus.

"She open it when I bring it in, and say, 'Go upstairs, Miss!'

"It was a raw cowhide strap bout two feet long, and she started to
pourin' it on me all de way up stairs. I didn't know what she was
whippin' me bout; but she pour it on, and she pour it on.

"Turrectly she say, 'You can't say "Marse Henry", Miss? You can't say,
"Marse Henry"!'

"Yes'm. Yes'm. I kin say. 'Marse Henry'!