Papa and mama never did meet again
before freedom, and they didn't meet afterwards.
"My mother had twelve children--eight girls and four boys. She had one
by a man named Peter Smith. She was away from her husband then. She had
four by my father--two boys and two girls; my father's name was Peter
Huff. My mother's name was Mary Sterling. I never did see my father no
more after we moved away from him.
"My father made cotton and corn, plowed and hoed in slavery time. His
old master had seventy-five or eighty hands. His old master treated him
pretty rough. He whipped them about working. He never hired no overseer
over them. When he whipped them he took their shirts off and whipped
them on their naked backs. He cut the blood out of some of them. He
never did rub no salt nor vinegar in their wounds. His youngest son done
his overseeing. He would whip them sometime but he wasn't tight on them
like some that I knowed.
"A fellow by the name of Jim Holbert was mean to his slaves as a man
could be. He would whip them night and day. Work them till dark; then
they would eat supper. Cook their own supper. Had nothing to cook but a
little meat and bread and molasses. Then they would go back and bale up
three or four bales of cotton. Some nights they work till twelve o'clock
then get up before daylight--'round four o'clock--and cook their
breakfast and go to work again.
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