Work

"The first work I did was nursing and after that I was water toter. I
reckon I was about seven or eight years old when I first began to nurse.
I could barely lift the baby. I would have to drag them 'round. Then I
toted water to the field. Then when I was put to plowing, and chopping
cotton, I don't know exactly how old I was. But I know I was a young
girl and it was a good while before the War. I had to do anything that
come up--thrashing wheat, sawing logs, with a wristband on, lifting
logs, splitting rails. Women in them days wasn't tender like they is
now. They would call on you to work like men and you better work too. My
mother and father were both field hands.


Soldiers

"Oo-oo-oo-ee-ee-ee!! Man, the soldiers would pass our house at daylight,
two deep or four deep, and be passing it at sundown still marching
making it to the next stockade. Those were Yankees. They didn't set no
slaves free. When I knowed anything about freedom, it was the Bureaus.
We didn't know nothing like young folks do now.

"We hardly knowed our names. We was cussed for so many bitches and sons
of bitches and bloody bitches, and blood of bitches. We never heard our
names scarcely at all. First young man I went with wanted to know my
initials! What did I know 'bout initials? You ask 'em ten years old now,
and they'll tell you. That was after the War. Initials!!!