in a two-story frame house that was surrounded by an oak grove on the
road leading from Franklin, North Carolina, to Clayton, Georgia. Hard
Sellars was the carriage driver, and while I am sure Marse George must
have had an overseer, I don't remember ever hearing anybody say his
name.

"Really, Miss, I couldn't say just how big that plantation was, but I am
sure there must have been at least four or five hundred acres in it. One
mighty peculiar thing about his slaves was that Marse George never had
more than 99 slaves at one time; every time he bought one to try to make
it an even hundred, a slave died. This happened so often, I was told,
that he stopped trying to keep a hundred or more, and held on to his 99
slaves, and long as he did that, there warn't any more deaths than
births among his slaves. His slaves had to be in the fields when the sun
rose, and there they had to work steady until the sun went down. Oh!
Yes, mam, Marse Tommy Angel was mighty mean to his slaves, but Miss
Jenny, his sister, was good as could be; that is the reason she gave my
mother to her sister, Miss Ca'line Sellars; because she thought Marse
Tommy was too hard on her.

"I heard some talk as to how after the slaves had worked hard in the
field all day and come to the house at night, they were whipped for
mighty small offenses. Marse George would have them tied hand and foot
over a barrel and would beat them with a cowhide, or cat-o'-nine tails
lash. They had a jail in Franklin as far back as I can recollect. Old
Big Andy Angel's white folks had him put in jail a heap of times,
because he was a rogue and stole everything he could get his hands on.
Nearly everybody was afraid of him; he was a great big double jointed
man, and was black as the ace of spades. No, mam, I never saw any slaves
sold, but my father's mother and his sister were sold on the block. The