and mix it with lard
and put it all over him and roll him in a sheet. It'd be two days or
more 'fore that nigger could work 'gain. I seed one nigger done that way
for stealin' a meat bone from the meathouse. That nigger got fifteen
hundred lashes. The li'l chaps would pick up egg shells and play with
them and if the overseer seed them he'd say you was stealin' eggs and
give you a beatin'. I seed long lines of slaves chained together driv by
a white man on a hoss, down the Jefferson road.

"The first work I done was drappin' corn, and then cow-pen boy and sheep
herder. All us house chaps had to shell a half bushel corn every night
for to feed the sheep. Many times I has walked through the quarters when
I was a little chap, cryin' for my mother. We mos'ly only saw her on
Sunday. Us chillen was in bed when the folks went to the field and come
back. I 'members wakin' up at night lots of times and seein' her make a
little mush on the coals in the fireplace, but she allus made sho' that
overseer was asleep 'fore she done that.

"One time the stock got in the field and the overseer 'cuses a old man
and jumps on him and breaks his neck. When he seed the old man dead, he
run off to the woods, but massa sent some nigger after him and say for
him to come back, the old man jus' got overhet and died.

"We went to church on the place and you ought to heared that preachin'.
Obey your massa and missy, don't steal chickens and eggs and meat, but
nary a word 'bout havin' a soul to save.

"We had parties Saturday nights and massa come out and showed us new
steps. He allus had a extra job for us on Sunday, but he gave us
Christmas Day and all the meat we wanted. But if you had money you'd
better hide it, 'cause he'd git it.

"The fightin' was did off from us. My father went to war to wait on Josh
Calloway. My father never come back. Massa Jeems cussed and 'bused us
niggers more'n ever, but he took sick and died and stepped off to Hell
'bout six months 'fore we got free. When we was free, they beat drums in
Marshall. I stayed on 'bout seven months and then my mother and me went
to farmin' for ourselves.

"I wore myself out right in this county and now I'm too old to work.
These folks I lives with takes good care of me and the gov'ment gives me
$11.00 a month what I is proud to git.

420165

JACOB BRANCH, about 86, was a slave of the Van Loos family, in
Louisiana, who sold him when a baby to Elisha Stevenson, of Do