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1430 Jones Street
Augusta, Georgia.
(Rickmond County)
BY: Mrs. Margaret Johnson Editor Federal Writers' Project, Augusta, Georgia.
EX-SIAVE INTERVIEW
Margaret Green, 1430 Jones Street, Augusta, Georgia (Richmond County)
Margaret Green, 1430 Jones Street was born in 1855 on the plantation of Mr. Cooke McKie in Edgefield County, South Carolina.
Margaret's house was spotlessly clean, her furniture of the golden oak type was polished, and the table cover and sideboard scarfs were beautifully laundered. Margaret is a small, trim little figure dressed in a grey print dress with a full gathered skirt and a clean, starched apron with strings tied in a big bow. She has twinkling eyes, a kindly smile and a pleasant manner.
"Yes, mam, I remembers slavery times very well. I was a little girl but I could go back home and show you right where I was when the sojers come through our place with their grey clothes and bright brass buttons. They looked mighty fine on their hosses ridin' 'round. I could show you right where those sojers had the camp".
Margaret described "the quarters", and told of the life. "Hach fam'ly had a garden patch, and could raise cotton. Only Marse Cooks raised cotton; what we raised we et".
"Margaret were the slaves on your master's plantation mistrsated?"
"What you say? Mistreat? Oh! you mean whipped! Yes, man, sometime Marse Cooke whip us when we need it, but he never hurt nobody. He just give 'em a lick or two to make 'em mind they business. Marse
Cooke was a good man, and he never let a overseer lay a finger on one of his niggers!"
"Margaret were you ever whipped?"
Margaret laughed; with her eyes twinkling merrily she replied, "Marse Cooke say he was gonna whip me 'cause I was so mischevious. He was on his horse. I broke and run, and Marse ain't give me that whippin' till yet!"
"Yes, mam, I hearn stories o' ghos'es and hants, but I never did b'lieve in none of 'em. I uster love to play and to get out of all the work I could. The old folk on the plantashun uster tell us younguns if we didn't hurry back from the spring with the water buckets, the hants and buggoos would catch us. I ain't never hurry till yet, and I never see a hant. I wished I could, 'caus' I don't b'lieve I would be scart."
"Margaret, did you learn to read?"
"Oh! no mam, that was sumpin' we wuzn't 'lowed to do; nobody could have lessons. But we went to Church to the Publican Baptist Church. Yes, mam, I'se sho' dat was the name --- the Publican Baptist Church --- ain't I been there all my life 'till I been grown and married? We uster go mornin' and evenin', and the white people sat on one side and the slaves on the other."
Margaret said her mother was a seamstress and also a cook. Three other seamstresses worked on the plantation. There was a spinning wheel and a loom, and all the cotton cloth for clothing was woven and than made into clothes for all the slaves. There were three shoe makers on the place who made shoes for the slaves, and did all the saddle and harness repair.
Margaret was asked who attended the slaves when they were sick.
"Marse Cooke's son was a doctor", she replied, and he 'tended anybody who was bad sick. Granny Phoebe was the midwife at our plantashun and she birthed all the babies. She was old when I was a little gal, and she lived to be
105. Marse Cooke never let any of his slaves do heavy work 'till dey was 18 years old." Margaret's father went to the war with "Marse Cooke" as his body servant, and her mother went also, to cook for him!
"To tell you the truth, man," said the old woman, "I 'member more 'bout that war back yonder than I member 'bout the war we had a few years ago."
