would get broke down from so much dancing" Mrs. Avery remarked. The
music was furnished with fiddles. When asked how the slaves came to own
fiddles she replied, "They bought them with money they earned selling
chickens." At night slaves would steal off from the Heard plantation, go
to LaGrange, Ga. and sell chickens which they had raised. Of course the
masters always required half of every thing raised by each slave and it
was not permissible for any slave to sell anything. Another form of
entertainment was the quilting party. Every one would go together to
different person's home on each separate night of the week and finish
that person's quilts. Each night this was repeated until every one had a
sufficient amount of covering for the winter. Any slave from another
plantation, desiring to attend these frolics, could do so after securing
a pass from their master.

Mrs. Avery related the occasion when her Uncle William was caught off
the Heard plantation without a pass, and was whipped almost to death by
the "Pader Rollers." He stole off to the depths of the woods here he
built a cave large enough to live in. A few nights later he came back to
the plantation unobserved and carried his wife and two children back to
this cave where they lived until after freedom. When found years later
his wife had given birth to two children. No one was ever able to find
his hiding place and if he saw any one in the woods he would run like a
lion.

Mr. Heard was a very mean master and was not liked by any one of his
slaves. Secretly each one hated him. He whipped unmercifully and in most
cases unnecessarily. However, he sometimes found it hard to subdue some
slaves who happened to have very high tempers. In the event this was the
case he would set a pack of hounds on him. Mrs. Avery related to the
writer the story told to her of Mr. Heard's cruelty by her grandmother.