Note: This narrative was chosen as it is the only narrative of a Maryland-born person enslaved in Montgomery County from this project. As we read these interviews, we're aware that they were narrated to white interviewers during the Great Depression and Jim Crow, which may have influenced the responses of those interviewed. This text was edited for punctuation.
"I'll be ninety years old next December. I dunno' the day. My Missis had the colored folks' ages written in a book but it was destroyed when the Confederate soldiers came through. But she had a son born two or three months younger than me and she remember that I was born in December, 1847, but she had forgot the day of the month.
"I was born down on the river bottom about four miles below Edwards Ferry, on the Eight Mile Level, between Edward's Ferry and Seneca. I belonged to ole Doctah White. He owned a lot ol lan down on de bottom. I dunno his first name. Everybody called him Doctah White. Yes, he was related to Doctah Elijah White. All the Whites in Montgomery County is related. Yes Bah, Doctah White was good to his slaves. Yes saw, he had many slaves. I dunno how many. My Missis took me away from de bottom when I was a little boy, 'cause de overseer he was so cruel to me. Yes sah he was mean. I promised him a killin' if ever I got big enough.
"We all liked the Missis. Everybody in den days used to ride horseback. She would come ridin' her horse down to de bottom with a great big basket of biscuits. We thought they were fine. We all glad to see de Missis a comm'. We always had plenty to eat, such as it was. We had coarse food but there was plenty of it.
"The white folks made our clothes for us. They made linsey for the woman and woolen cloth for de men. They gave clothes sufficient to keep 'em warm. The men had wool clothes with brass buttons that had shanks on 'em. They looked good when they were new. They had better clothes then than most of us have now.
"They raised mostly corn an oats an' wheat down on de river bottom
in those days. They didn't raise tobacco. But I've heard say that they used to raise it long before I was born. They out grain with cradles in dem days. They had a lot 'o men and would slay a lot 'o wheat in a day. It was pretty work to see four or five cradlers in a field and others following them raking the wheat in bunohes and others following binding them in bundles. The first reapers that came were called Dorsey reapers. They out the grain and bunched it. It was then bound by hand....
Taken from Slave Narratives, A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, by the Federal Writers' Project 1936-1938, The Library of Congress, Works Project Administration.
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