The
wagons would hold a crib full of corn. They loaded up everything on the
place there was to eat and carried it off. My folks and the other folks
was in the field. Colored folks didn't like 'em taking all they had to
eat and had stored up to live on. They didn't leave a hog nor a chicken,
nor anything else they could find. They drove off all the cows and
calves they could find. Colonel Sam Williams, the old master, soon did
go to war then. The folks had a hard time making a living. Old mistress
had four girls and her baby Ed was one day older than I was. The
children of the hands played around in the woods and every place and
stayed in the field if they was big enough to do any work. Old mistress
had all the children pick up scaley barks and hickory nuts and chestnuts
and walnuts. She put them in barrels. She sold some of them. She had a
heap of sugar maple trees. They put an elder funnel to run the sap in
buckets. We carried that and she boiled it down to brown sugar. She had
up pick up chips to burn when she simmered it down or made soap. She
kept all the children hunting ginsing up in the mountains. She kept it
in sacks. A man come by and buy it. We hunted chenqupins down in the
swamps. There was lots of walnut trees in the woods.
No the slaves didn't leave Colonel Williams.
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