Maybe he run off. They usually
whipped them for that. No ma'am. I was right. Mrs. Glover didn't let her
colored folks be whipped. Robert, you see, was Donovan's man. He didn't
belong to Mrs. Glover. Her folks never got whipped.
Maybe Robert run off. I don't know. The folks did one thing special to
keep them from running. They fastened a sort of yoke around they necks.
From it there run up a sort of piece and there was a bell on the top of
that. It was so high the folks who wore it couldn't reach the bell. But
if they run it would tinkle and folks could find them. I don't quite
know how it worked--I just slightly remembers.
No, ma'am, I was just sort of a little girl before the war. You might
say I was never a slave. Cause I didn't have to work. Mrs. Glover
wouldn't let me work in the field and I didn't have much work to do in
the house either. Mrs. Glover was an old widow woman, but she was shore
good. Miss Kate was her onliest child. Kate's daughter was named Mary.
Was I afraid of the soldiers? No ma'am. I wasn't.
Lots of them that came through were colored soldiers. I remember that
they wore long tailed coats. They had brass buttons on they coats. But
we had to move from Natchez.
First the soldiers run us off to Tennisaw Parish--an island there." (A
check on maps in the atlas of Encyclopedia Britannica reveals a Tenses
Parish, Louisiana--across the river and a few miles north of Natchez.
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