She and her young master, John McNeely, who was raised with her
and who was about the same age as she was, got to fighting one day and
she whipped him clear as a whistle. After she whipped him that fight
went all over the country. She was between sixteen and seventeen years
old an he was about the same. She had never been whipped by the white
folks.
She was in the kitchen. I don't know what the trouble started over. But
they had an argument. There were some other white boys in the kitchen
with her young master, and they kept pushing the two of them up to
fight. He wanted to show off; so he told her what he would do to her if
she didn't hush her mouth. She told him to just try it, and the fight
was on. So they fought for about an hour, and the other white boys egged
them on.
She said that her old master never did whip her, and she sure wasn't
going to let the young one do it. I never heard that they punished her
for whipping her young master. I never heard her say that anybody tried
to whip her at any other time. My mother was a strong woman. She could
lift one end of a log with any man.
Slave Uprisings
My mother used to say that when she was about fourteen years old, (That
was about the time that the stars fell, and the stars fell in 1833
[HW:*]. So she must have been born in 1819.
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