"In slave time, my father was a field hand, I know that. But I know more
about my mother. I heard her say she was always a cook.
"I heard her speak about having cruel treatment from her first masters;
I don't know who they were. But after the Fletchers bought them, they
had a good time. They come all the way out of Louisiana up here. My
mother was sold from her mother and sister-sold some two or three times.
She never did get no trace of her sister, but she found her grandmother
in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and brought her here. Her sister's name was
Fannie and her grandmother's name was Crecie Lander. That is an Indian
name. I couldn't understand nothing she would say hardly. She was
bright. All my folks were bright but me. My mother had hair way down her
shoulders and you couldn't tell my uncle from a dago. My grandmother was
a regular Indian color. She spoke Indian too. You couldn't understand
nothing she said.
"When I woke up, they had these homemade beds. I couldn't hardly
describe them, but they put the sides into the posts with legs. They
were stout things too what I am talkin' 'bout. They made cribs for us
little children and put them under the bed. They would pull the cribs
out at night and run them under the bed during the day. They called them
cribs trundles.
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