hunting, we treed something. It fell out of the tree, everybody took to
their heels, white and colored, the white men outran the colored hunter,
leading the gang. I never went hunting afterwards.

"My choice food was fish and crabs cooked in all styles by mother. You
have asked about gardens, yes, some slaves had small garden patches
which they worked by moonlight.

"As for clothes, we all wore home-made clothes, the material woven on
the looms in the clothes house. In the winter we had woolen clothes and
in summer our clothes were made from cast-off clothes and Kentucky
jeans. Our shoes were brogans with brass tips. On Sunday we fed the
stock, after which we did what we wanted.

"I have seen many slave weddings, the master holding a broom handle, the
groom jumping over it as a part of the wedding ceremony. When a slave
married someone from another plantation, the master of the wife owned
all the children. For the wedding the groom wore ordinary clothes,
sometimes you could not tell the original outfit for the patches, and
sometimes Kentucky jeans. The bride's trousseau, she would wear the
cast-off clothes of the mistress, or, at other times the clothes made by
other slaves.

"It was said our plantation contained 10,000 acres. We had a large
number of slaves, I do not know the number. Our work was hard, from
sunup to sundown. The slaves were not whipped.

"There was only one slave ever sold from the plantation, she was my
aunt. The mistress slapped her one day, she struck her back. She was
sold and taken south. We never saw or heard of her afterwards.