The interviews with former slaves living in Indiana remind us that slaves worked on southern farms and plantations of various sizes. Reverend Wamble’s owner, for example, usually had two hundred or more slaves, who worked under the supervision of overseers, who sometimes were slaves themselves. Candies Richardson said that her master had about fifty slaves, who raised crops, cotton, tobacco, and hogs. Sylvester Smith, his sister, and her husband, on the other hand, were the only slaves on Richard Newsom’s farm. Newsom lived in a log house for a time, though later he built a frame house. Then quite young, Smith lived with the Newsoms, but his sister and her husband lived in a shack that was no better than a coal shed. On another plantation, according to Rosaline Rogers, both male and female slaves lived in a single cabin, no matter how many there were. She recalled that at one time twenty slaves lived in a small cabin, which had holes between the logs big enough for cats and dogs to crawl through. The cabin was heated by a wood-burning fireplace, which also was used for cooking food.
Adeline Rose Lennox reported that slaves on the plantations where she was held lived in small but comfortable log houses a distance from the owner’s house: “Our quarters, both on the Reuben Rose plantation and then later on the Henry Rose place, were in log cabins. The floors were dirt, and there were fireplaces built of mud and sticks.” Reverend Wamble said the slaves’ living quarters were made of logs covered with mud. Roofs were made of coarse boards covered with about a foot of dirt, and the floors also were dirt. Their furniture included a small stove and board beds attached to corner walls. Slaves slept without blankets on these board beds or directly on the dirt floor. George Washington Buckner said that his crude slave cabin in Kentucky had only holes in the walls for windows, with bark shutters to keep out the rain and snow. His parents slept on a wooden bed covered with a straw mattress and patchwork quilts, and the children slept on a straw bed that was pushed under the bed during the day and pulled into the middle of the cabin at night. Patsy Jane Bland recalled sleeping on a straw pallet on the floor and in a trundle bed shoved back under the big bed. John W. Fields said that his “life as a slave was a repetition of hard work, poor quarters and board. We had no beds at that time; we just bunked on the floor. I had one blanket, and many’s the night I sat by the fireplace during the long cold nights in the winter.”
Apparently some slaves ate well, but others had barely enough to eat. This varied not only from plantation to plantation but also on the same plantation. Candies Richardson, for instance, said that the slaves who worked in her owner’s house ate the same food that the owner and his family ate; those working on other parts of the plantation, however, did not fare so well. They ate fat meat and parts of the hog that people in the big house would not eat. A week’s ration of food was given each slave, but if it was eaten before the week was up, the slave had only salt pork to eat until the next ration. A person could not eat much of that, though, because it was too salty.
Ellen Cave said that on her plantation slaves lived mainly on bran-bread, but the owner’s children often slipped them meat and other food. Sylvester Smith said that slaves on his plantation ate corn cakes, side pork, and beans. Seldom did they have anything sweet except molasses. Patsy Jane Bland baked corn dodger on a hot brick fireplace, hanging the kettle over the crane to cook “pawn hoss,” which was made from meal and bacon. She roasted sweet potatoes and sweet corn and baked ash cake. Mollie Tate indicated that even some slaves living in slave quarters fared pretty well: “Our meals at the cabin were cooked in the fireplace. Mother would make cakes of meal and water, sometimes a little salt, and cover them with ashes. Potatoes were baked likewise. With our menu of hoecakes and molasses, we thrived and grew stout and healthier than most children do today with all kinds of food and luxuries.”
In general, though, it seems that slaves living in the big house were better off than those living in slave quarters. As Harriet Cheatam explains, “When I was a child, I didn’t have it as hard as some of the children in the quarters. I always stayed in the big house and slept on the floor, right near the fireplace, with one quilt for my bed and one quilt to cover me. Then when I growed up, I was in the quarters.” Mittie Blakeley’s mother died when Mittie was a baby, so she was taken into the “big house,” raised with the white children, and assigned only light chores, such as gathering eggs with the white children. She said the child who brought in the most eggs got a ginger cake, and she nearly always won the cake. When she was older, she spun wool and knitted. At first Henrietta Jackson was a plow hand in the cotton fields, but later she was taken into the big house to work as a maid.
It appears that “gift slaves”—slaves given as presents, generally to family members—also had a better life than most slaves. William M. Quinn said that gift slaves were never sold from the plantation on which he worked. Another gift slave, Robert McKinley, said that his master was extremely cruel in general but was always kind to Robert because he had been the master’s present to his favorite daughter. McKinley worked in the owner’s blacksmith shop, because the master’s daughter did not want him working on the farm. According to George Washington Buckner, some slave children were given to the slaveholder’s young children and became their property. As a child, Buckner served the master’s son—taking care of his clothing, polishing his boots, and putting away his toys—though the two children were about the same age.
Several former slaves reported that children were not worked as hard as adults. For instance, Adeline Rose Lennox said she “was put to work when I was six years old, just like other slave children. We were never worked hard because of our age. We worked in the fields and in the houses.” At the age of fourteen, though, Lennox plowed, harrowed, and seeded the fields. Still, she maintained that she was “treated toľable” well when she was a slave, and that “I’ve worked a heap harder since I was freed than I did before.” Henry Clay Moorman said that as a boy he did small jobs around the plantation, such as planting tobacco and going to the mill. George Thomas, who was only about nine years old when freed, said that as a slave he had helped turn the spinning wheel and knitted stockings. Ellen Cave worked as a maid in the “big house” until she grew up. Then she had to do most kinds of outdoor labor. In the winter she sawed logs in the snow all day, and in the summer she pitched hay and did other work in the fields. Other slaves apparently enjoyed an easier life because they were related to the owner. The master of Josephine Hicks’s grandmother “was also her father, so she was always well treated. It was her work to do the spinning, so she had no outside work at all.”
Some female slaves served as wet nurses in the big house and also received better treatment. Moses Slaughter’s mother had ten children of her own and also was wet nurse to ten of her master’s children. She kept house for the owner and slept in a room in the big house so that she could take care of his children at night. Peter Gohagen told the WPA fieldworker, Iris Cook, that back in Kentucky he had known her grandfather and her father’s wet nurse: “Yes, ma’am, oľ Aunt Barbara, what nursed your pa, was shore a mighty fine colored woman. She was low and heavyset and light-skinned. She nursed the Gohagen boys, too.” Since Anderson Whitted’s mother took care of the white children on the plantation, her own nine children were well treated, too.
The former slaves interviewed in Indiana had performed a variety of jobs on southern farms and plantations. Sarah Locke’s father cradled grain, and the female slaves milked ten or twelve cows a day, knitted socks, and wove linsey-woolsey for their dresses. Locke’s master sheared sheep with the slaves. Susan Smith had to pick cotton, shear sheep, spin, thread looms, weave cloth, take the wool to the carding machine, mold candles, and go to the mill. Maria Love’s mother, Elmira Polk, had to work very hard, “just like a man,” plowing and working in the fields from morning until night. Patsy Jane Bland also reported that she “worked like a man.” In addition to her household duties, she plowed and helped raise tobacco. She said she had always worked and would not have it any other way. Mattie Jenkins pointed out that on her plantation the slaves’ main job was raising cotton, but they also washed, ironed, milked, tended stock, and raised feed for the stock. Callie Bracey’s mother, Louise Terrell, worked hard in the fields from early morning until late in the evening, when it was too dark to see. When she returned from the fields, she cooked and packed lunches for the field hands for the next day. She, too, said that women had to split rails all day long just like the men. John Daugherty’s mother cut corn, chopped wood, and drove oxen in the field. He said that many times his mother’s toenails were mashed off by oxen stepping on her bare feet.
Some slaves were paid, some were given garden space or stock, and some moonlighted. Solomon Hicks’s father “was allowed a very small pittance” for all the hemp over a hundred pounds that he could cut in a day. He also made baskets at night and sold them to make extra money. William M. Quinn said it was unusual for a slave to receive money for working, but his owner paid his brother and him ten cents a day for cutting and shucking corn. Quinn’s master also paid his own son ten cents a day for working in the fields. Mrs. Hockaday reported that many slaveholders gave their slaves small tracts of land to tend after working hours. Anything raised belonged to them, and they could even sell the products and keep the money. Many slaves were able to save enough from these tracts to purchase their freedom long before Emancipation. Matthew Hume’s father was allowed to raise an acre of tobacco, an acre of corn, garden vegetables, and chickens for himself. He also was given milk and butter from one cow. His overseer advised him to save his money, but Hume said his father always drank it up. Slaves were given a little of everything that was raised on the large farm on which Julia Bowman worked.
Shoes and clothing were scarce on the plantations. Candies Richardson said, “We had to make our own clothes out of a cloth, like you use, called canvas. We walked to church with our shoes on our arms to keep from wearing them out.” Mollie Tate observed, “It would seem peculiar nowadays to see children wearing tow sacks for clothing. But that was what the children on the plantation often wore, or at least that was the resemblance, just a hole on each side for the arms and one for the head.” Preston Tate reported that since the boys in a family were not fortunate enough to each have a Sunday suit, one homespun suit and a pair of homemade shoes were rotated among them. The other boys in the family wore their everyday clothing, long tow shirts, to church. He said that if you took a sack, cut an opening in the bottom for the head, and split each side for the arms, you would have something like a tow shirt. Sometimes it was difficult to distinguish boys from girls by their clothing, as it was common for them to dress alike. Callie Bracey’s mother was given two dresses a year and wore her oldest dress as an underskirt. She never had a hat, so she always wore a rag tied over her head.
As a child, Anthony Young never had any shoes, and in the winter he had to run to keep his feet from freezing. He said that he would chase hogs from their beds and stand on the warm straw to warm his feet. Likewise, Mrs. Preston often warmed her bare feet in cattle bedding, but she claimed that slaves did not always go barefoot; they sometimes wore old shoes or wrapped their feet in rags. Joseph Mosley’s father served as the shoemaker for all the adults and farmhands on the plantation. In September he began making shoes for the year. First he made shoes for the people in the big house, and then for the workers. Summer or winter, though, the slave children never wore shoes, according to Mosley. Rosaline Rogers said that slaves on her first owner’s plantation generally were given a pair of shoes at Christmas, but if the shoes were worn out before summer, they had to go barefoot. Her second owner, however, would not buy shoes for his slaves. When they plowed, their feet would crack and bleed from walking on the hard clods. If they complained, they were whipped, so very few complained. Patsy Jane Bland said, “I never wore anything but wool underwear in the wintertime, and none of my younguns did either. I used to sit and knit wool up for their stockings. Indeed, I’ve worked hard.”
Frequently slave families were separated. When John Rudd was a small boy, his master died, and the slaves were auctioned to the highest bidders. “If you want to know what unhappiness means,” Rudd said, “just you stand on the slave block and hear the auctioneer’s voice selling you away from the folks you love.” According to Rudd, mothers and fathers often were separated from their children at the auction block. As Amy Patterson explained, “Our sorrow began when slave traders came to Cadiz and bought any slaves they took a fancy to and separated us from our families.” Separation from her mother and sisters at a slave auction was among her earliest memories. When Adeline Rose Lennox was seven years old, she “was carried away from my parents to the farm of the master’s son, Henry Rose, and there I stayed until after the war.” She recalled that she cried when she had to leave her parents, but she was told that she had to go to a new home. Solomon Hicks said his “mother was a partial slave. By that I mean she was taken from her mother, who was a slave, while an infant and given to a family to raise.... She was given away in order that my grandmother would be of more value to her master if not burdened with the care of a baby.” Hicks also said that “When the slaves became too numerous the old ones were sold down south in order to make room for the younger ones.” Mary Crane explained how slaves were sold down the river:
In those days, there were men who made a business of buying up Negroes at auction sales and shipping them down to New Orleans to be sold to owners of cotton and sugar cane plantations, just as men today buy and ship cattle. These men were called “nigger-traders,” and they would ship whole boatloads at a time, buying them up, two or three here, two or three there, and holding them in a jail until they had a boatload. This practice gave rise to the expression “sold down the river.”
Henrietta Jackson could not remember her father, who was sold soon after her birth, and when still a child she was taken from her mother and sold. She remembered the auction block and said that she had brought a good price, for she was strong and healthy. John W. Fields also was separated from his parents as a child: “I can’t describe the heartbreak and horror of that separation. I was only six years old, and it was the last time I ever saw my mother for longer than one night. Twelve children were taken from my mother in one day!”
George Fortman said that his master did not sell slaves or separate slave families, but he recalled slave auctions where blacks were stripped of their clothing so that their bodies could be examined. He also saw boats loaded with slaves on the way to slave markets. Sarah Locke said that her owner was kind to his slaves and never sold them to slave traders. His family was very large, so they bought and sold slaves within the family or to neighbors. Locke’s father, brothers, and grandmother belonged to the same slaveholder, but her mother and two sisters belonged to another branch of the family, who lived about seven miles away. Her father visited them on Wednesday and Saturday nights, and they would have big dinners on these nights in their cabin.
Although gift slaves sometimes enjoyed a better lifestyle than other slaves, the practice of giving slaves to members of the slaveholder’s family as wedding gifts also separated slave families. As Mary Crane explained, “In those days, slaveholders, whenever one of their daughters would get married, would give her and her husband a slave as a wedding present, usually allowing the girl to pick the one she wished to accompany her to her new home.”