in twenty years. I lost my dear wife thirteen years ago and I now live
with my son.

My father, Stephen Boone, was born in Maryland, in 1800. He was bought
by a nigger buyer while a boy and was sold to Miley Boone in Marion
County, Kentucky. Father was what they used to call "a picked slave,"
was a good worker and was never mistreated by his master. He married my
mother in 1825, and they had eighteen children. Master Miley Boone gave
father and mother their freedom in 1829, and gave them forty acres of
land to tend as their own. He paid father for all the work he did for
him after that, and was always very kind to them.

My mother was born in slavery, in Marion County, Kentucky, in 1802. She
was treated very mean until she married my father in 1825. With him she
gained her freedom in 1829. I was the last born of her eighteen
children. She was a good woman and joined church after coming to Indiana
and died in 1917, living to be one hundred and fifteen years old.

I have heard my mother tell of a girl slave who worked in the kitchen of
my mother's master. The girl was told to cook twelve eggs for breakfast.
When the eggs were served, it was discovered there were eleven eggs on
the table and after being questioned, she admitted that she had eaten
one. For this, she was beaten mercilessly, which was a common sight on
that plantation.

The most terrible treatment of any slave, is told by my father in a
story of a slave on a neighboring plantation, owned by Daniel Thompson.
"After committing a small wrong, Master Thompson became angry, tied his
slave to a whipping post and beat him terribly. Mrs. Thompson begged him
to quit whipping, saying, 'you might kill him,' and the master replied