IF YOU DIDN'T PICK TWO HUNDRED FIFTY POUNDS, THEY'D
PUNISH YOU, put you in the stocks. If you'd run off, they put the nigger
hounds behind you. I never run off, but my mother run off.
"She would go in the woods. I don't know where she'd go after she'd get
in the woods. She would go in the woods and hide somewheres. She'd take
somethin' to eat with her. I couldn't find her myself. She take
somethin' to eat with her. She didn't know what flour bread was. I don't
remember what she'd take--somethin' she could carry. Sometimes she would
stay in the woods two months, sometimes three months. They'd pay for the
nigger hounds and let them chase her back. She'd try to get away. She
never took me with her when she ran away.
Buying and Selling
"My mother and her sister were bought in old Virginny. Ben Watkins was
the one that bought her. He bought my father too. Then he sold my father
to the Leightons. Leighton bought my father from Ben Watkins for a
carriage driver. I was never bought nor sold. I was born on Ben Watkins'
plantation and freed on it.
Patrollers
"I've heered them say the pateroles is out. I don't know who they was. I
know they'd whip you. I was a child then. I would just know what I was
told mostly.
How Freedom Came
"The Yankees told my mother she was free.
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