not a midwife. She nursed the white babies. That was what she was sent
to Louisiana for--to nurse the babies. The Louisiana man that owned her
was named George Dorkins. But I think this white woman came from
Virginia. She married this Louisiana man, then sent back to her father's
house and got grandma; she got her for a nurse. She worked only a year
and a half in the field before peace was declared. After she got grown
and married, my grandfather--she had to stay with him and cook and keep
house for him. That was during slavery time but after George Dorkins
died. Dorkins went and got hisself a barrel of whiskey--one of these
great big old barrels--and set it up in his house, and put a faucet in
it and didn't do nothin' but drink whiskey. He said he was goin' to
drink hisself to death. And he did.

"He was young enough to go to war and he said he would drink hisself to
death before he would go, and he did. My grandma used to steal
newspapers out of his house and take them down to the quarters and leave
them there where there were one or two slaves that could read and tell
how the War was goin' on. I never did learn how the slaves learned to
read. But she was in the house and she could steal the papers and send
them down. Later she could slip off and they would tell her the news,
and then she could slip the papers back.

"Her master drank so much he couldn't walk without falling and she would
have to help him out. Her mistress was really good. She never allowed
the overseer to whip her. She was only whipped once in slave time while
my father's mother was whipped more times than you could count.

"Her master often said, 'I'll drink myself to death before I'll go to
war and be shot down like a damn target.' She said in living with them
in the house, she learned to cuss from him. She said she was a cussin'