|
|
Minnesota
Mary Sellers, a 200-pound woman of about eighty-two, came to Minneapolis about fifteen years ago from her home in Tennessee. She lived with her son until about five years ago when circumstances sent her to the Crispus Attucks Home for the aged. She is dark in complexion, wears her hair in rolls on top of her head, and loves to sit in her rocker while someone reads to her. Her favorite book is the Bible.
"When the Civil War ended I was about 10 years old. My Master was a Cudgeville and we lived in Fadeville[Fayetteville?], Tennessee. My father's name was Dickson, and my mother's Millie Dickson, After we were free, we went by the name of Dickson instead of Cudgeville. I was just a little girl when the war began, but I can remember when the Yankees came in and told me we were all free.
"My Master he didn't whip his colored people so we all didn't get no whippings. Some of the white masters and overseers would cut the colored people all to pieces with whips on their bare backs, but he didn't do it. He always said he didn't believe in it. The soldiers came to our house and carried all our chickens and things away, and afterwards my Master got tired of being a Rebel and joined up with the Yankees.
"We didn't know anything about any church. We would go in the woods and sing and pray by ourselves, and our father would always talk to us.
"We ate beef and pork meat, chickens, possums, biscuits, corn bread, and plenty of milk and butter. The slaves got up and got to work as soon as the sun was up, and quit at sundown. I remember seeing long lines of slaves handcuffed together passing our plantation. Some even had bells and chains on their legs; these were the unruly ones - mostly the men. None of the slaves on the Cudgeville plantation ever run away up north because the master was always so kind to all of us.
"The older ones worked in the cotton fields and the master gave the cotton to the boys who had families and no way to support them. I have seen slaves whipped by what they call a "nigger trader" until they didn't have any skin on their backs. If our master's slaves didn't behave or became unruly, he would give them a few lashes - maybe 500 or so, but the "nigger trader" would give them about 900. All of them didn't do that - jus' some of them. They took women away from their husbands and children away from their mothers and fathers, and shipped them off, and sometimes they would never see each other again. Some of them got together after the war, but most of them didn't even know where their people were or what their right names was.
"We knowed nothing about no Bible or school until we were set free. My master was a lawyer, and we all played with the master's children. The master's boys would go into the field and work with us especially when we thinned the corn.
"My grandmother weaved all the time so that we had cotton dresses to wear. We went barefooted all the time except when it was too cold then the master would get shoes and stockings for us. The men wore big boots. We had rope beds with shucks in the ticks for mattresses and plenty of cover to cover up with in cold weather.
"When the slaves got sick the doctor looked after them. We went and got medicine at the drug store like they do now. We got herbs out of the woods, and then some old man or woman would make what we called bitters, and we would take that sometimes.
"After we were free, we stayed on our same plantation because we didn't have any other place to go. I stayed there until I got to be a grown woman, then I married and left. I have raised fourteen children, and now they are all dead but one who lives over in Minneapolis. I never had any grandchildren."
