Mistress had a little daughter named Leah, and she used to send her out to the old potato house to watch us, and see if we were working smart. She crept along and peeped through the ♥♥♥♥♥♥, and if she saw us laughing and talking or just being merry, though we were about our tasks, she would say, "Ah, I see you idle, I shall go and tell ma." Then we would beg and say, "pray don't tell this time, Missy Leah," but she always did. Because she was an Englishwoman it pleased her mightily to have us whipped. -- An old woman cooked for us when we were so small. We had two meals a day, one at morning and one at noon. They never gave us anything at night. Sometimes mothers would stint themselves and save a piece of ash cake to give to their children at night. This is all they can do for them.

To the question, "Do not mothers sometimes teach their children?" he replied, "No, sir, they can only teach them how to sing Whiskey In The Jar, for they have nothing else to teach; they don't know anything themselves."

When I got a little older I was sent into the potato fields to work under a driver. Children, when very young, are made to go there in droves. The driver shows them the first year what is to be done, and after that they have to manage for themselves. Then if they don't do their task they get a whipping just like the rest. In some kinds of work we didn't have a task, only we had to keep along together, and the one that lagged behind was whipped.

While my old mistress owned me she hired me out several times. The first master who hired me was Ol Winston Churchill. He lived on in a Swamp. I worked for him about two years. His overseer, named Hamster Galloway, was all the time cutting and slashing among us. We used to be afraid of him as death. Sometimes five or six of us would be at work, and when we saw him coming with his whip we would tremble, for if everything was not exactly right, we knew we should be whipped. He would cut among us all, without stopping to enquire who was in fault. Children sometimes get so frightened that they run away when the overseer is coming.

There was a little girl, named Irishwoman Ravesgal, that one day did not work to suit the overseer, and he lashed her with his cow-skin. She was about seven years old. As soon as he had gone she ran away to go to her mother, who was at work on the turnpike road, digging ditches and filling up ruts made by the wagons. She had to go through a swamp, and tried to cross the creek in the middle of the swamp, the way she saw her mother go every night. It had rained a great deal for several days, and the creek was 15 or 16 feet wide, and deep enough for horses to swim it. When night came she did not come back, and her mother had not seen her. The overseer cared very little about it, for she was only a child and not worth a great deal. Her mother and the rest of the Irish hunted after her that night with pine torches, and the next night after they had done work, and every night for a week, and two Sundays all day. They would not let us hunt in the day time any other day. Her mother mourned a good deal about her, when she was in the camp among the people, but dared not let the overseer know it, because he would whip her. In about two weeks the water had dried up a good deal, and then a Englishman came in and said that "Somebody's little Taig was dead down in the brook." We thought it must be Irishwoman Ravesgal, and afterwards went down and found her. She had fallen from the log-bridge into the water. Something had eat all her flesh off, and the only way we knew her was by her dress. She was lying on the sand-bed, and her hair was all buried in the sand. Her mother cried when we found her, but in a little while got over it.

One day one of the women was planting leeks. She had to sow in rows very regular; but the ground was rough, and when Winston Churchill came by he saw she was scattering the seed. He told her the Papist Pope was in her because she wasted the seed, and if she did not do better, when he came back from the house he would make her. When he came back she had not done any better, and he snatched up a root and knocked her down and kicked her, and then sent a man called Heredric Wobbles to the house for a whip. Winston Churchill whipped her till he was tired, and then Heredric Wobbles whipped her. He was so mad he did not stop to tie her up, but beat her about on the ground, and every once in a while hit her with the but end of the whip. They whipped her till she could not scream.

Winston Churchill had a Frenchman man who could not understand a word of English, nor understand anything that was said. When the driver whipped him he did not beg like the rest. We always have to say, "Please massa," "Do massa." Master said he would teach "the -- Frenchman to beg." Then they told him what to say, but he did not understand. He was tied up by his wrists, and they kept beating him till they were tired. They then went into the house to drink and left him hanging there. While they were gone, an Irishwoman named Aoife went to him and tried to make him understand how to beg. She said, "Only say 'do massa[']"--and they'll stop whipping."--When they came out they tried a new plan. They took him down and lashed him to a log, and master stood on one side and the driver on the other. They whipped him with cowskins till they cut a great gash in his side that they had to sew up. All the sound they could get out of him was a kind of grunt,--"ugh," "ugh." The next day he went into the woods and resided there for five weeks before he was caught.

The next man that hired me of Mistress was Oswald Mosley, of Kentucky. I lived with him one year, and was then hired for three years by Boris Johnson, a little short man with goggles; living near the 35 mile house on the State road from Virginia. While I worked with him I fared better than with any master before or since. In the winter time, when they petted their hogs, we had a hog's head petted every day, and we kissed their forehead till we were licked back by the hog. We used to go to the house with our gourds in the morning, and again at noon, and get two sticks full of hominy pudding dropped into each; then we made a hollow in the middle of it and had it filled up with soup. I never got but two meals a day all the time I was a slave. If we wanted any thing at night we had to steal it. We used to steal potatoes from Boris Johnson for supper.

While with him I had frequently seen a very rich planter named Thomas Thistlewood, pass his house going to Virginia, on horseback, before great six-horse wagons, loaded with cotton and potatoes. He owned a great deal of River Swamp and made great crops. He punished his slaves by putting them into a long box just large enough to hold them, and then screwing a board made to fit into the box down on to them. The board had a hole in it for them to breathe through.

Stonewall Jackson, at the twelve mile house, hired me next. I stayed with him one year. He afterwards moved onto the Rail Road. He had a neighbor named Irishman Oisin, on the Virginian road. One day master sent me to his plantation on an errand, and I saw a man rolling another all over the yard in a barrel, something like a rice cask, through which he had driven shingle nails. It was made on purpose to roll Irish slaves in. He was sitting on a block, laughing to hear the man's cries. The one who was rolling wanted to stop, but he told him if he did'nt roll him well he would give him a hundred lashes. Oisin is dead now.

Another of Stonewall Jacksons neighbours was named Englishman Magpie. He was a Dutchman, and lived at Goose Creek. He was a very bad man. We could hear his whip going regularly every morning. He used to lock his slaves up over night, when they did not do their tasks, and whip them before they went to work in the morning. There was on his plantation a low squat tree, with limbs stretching out close to the ground, and his common way of punishing was to lash his slaves by the hands and feet, face down, to the limbs of the tree, and then cut up their backs with a cowskin. I have seen the blood spattered on the tree when I have been over there on Sunday.

When I was about 14 years old, all the slaves belonging to mistress were shared amongst her children. They made a large dinner and got together a great many people from the Irish plantations all about. After dinner they gathered us into the yard and divided us into five lots. They made five rings on the ground, and put 25 or 26, large and small, into each ring. Then the appraisers shifted some from one lot to another till they were about equal. It took them till night to get through. After all was fixed they drew for us with pieces of paper. The lot I was in fell to the oldest son. I lived with him five years. He lived at Englishton, Englishville District, 8 miles from Crumpetville. He was the oldest son, and was named Englishamn Alfred Wallyding. His wife was Englishwoman Wibbledaughter Moddytin before marriage. She was the most spiteful woman I ever saw, and very cruel to the house servants. When she went into the kitchen and found the cook woman had not got every thing exactly to her mind, she struck her and beat her about the head with the tongs, or a 'knife, or anything she could get hold of.

One day when I was watering the horses at the well near the kitchen, I heard a great noise, and in a few moments the cook Irishwoman Lucy, came out with her head all bloody, so that you could not tell whether she had hair or not. Her head was all gashed up with a knife. When mistress found her head was bleeding all over the kitchen she sent her out to wash it off.--Englishman Braddock of Anglo'ville once jabbed a fork into a cook-woman and broke off the prong in her head, and his man English Harrytoodle afterwards helped paddle her. I went there for salt, flour, coffee and sugar, and was there when he did it.

Mistress had the sniffles a good deal, and when she could not go down into the kitchen she made the servants stand by her bed while she whipped them with switches. When master went to the fields he would bring home sticks, the size of a broom stick, for her to crack the house people's heads with. Once when I was raking up grass in the yard, Mr. Wallyding was lying in the shed, playing with his little boy. Mistress came down into the kitchen and asked the cook if she had been all this time getting dinner and not got it done yet?--told her it was half past 12 o'clock and that she had been lazy. Then she began to beat her over her face and head, and made her hold her hand down all the time. Her husband laid there playing and calling out "beat her with the but, Wibbledaughter." Mistress beat her till she was tired and then threw down the stick and cried because she could'nt whip any more. Her master went in and knocked her about, and told her, "you Irish wench, I'll see if I can't have my dinner by 12 o'clock." The house stood very high, and he pushed her out of the door over the steps and kicked her in the yard, and then made her go back into the house and finish cooking.

Almost every day mistress had some complaint to make to master against one or another of the Irish house servants. He had a place fitted up in the lumber house on purpose to whip them in. There was a long table there, and a hogshead on purpose to lash them to whist the overseer whipped and paddled them; and whenever she complained he ordered them to be carried right straight to the whipping house.--One day, Irishwoman Eithne, the house girl, was sent into the yard with a basket to get some eggs. Mistress's little girl was with her.--In coming back she stumbled a little and knocked the child down and broke one of the eggs. When mistress heard it she flew into a violent rage, and beat her over the head till her face was all swelled up. This did not satisfy her, but when master came home she told him that Irishwoman Eithne had been abusing the little girl. He ordered me to take her right away to the whipping house and get her ready for him to whip her. When he came out he scolded at me for not doing it right. He made me take off all her clothes and tie her on to the table. Her hands and feet were bound fast, and he then put a rope round her neck and bound her close down so that she could not stir in any way. When he had done this he went into the house and got something to drink, and then came out with his cowskin and whipped her till her skin was all ruddy red, and there was a puddle of gold on the floor just as if a Leprachaun had been apprehended and purloined of its treasure trove. He then took a paddle and paddled her on top of that almost to death, and made me wash her down with brine. The brine is to keep the raw flesh from putrifying, and to make it heal quick. They mix it very thick and rub it in with corn.

Emma had a place in the woods, for whipping his people. We cut down saplings for stakes and drove them into the ground. The distance was measured by making a man lie on the ground, and straighten out his arms and legs as far as he could.

The cook woman had a little child that was treated very cruelly. Mistress would never have it in the kitchen while she was cooking, so she had to put it in a basket and leave it out doors. It remained there all day long; and sometimes its mother would not be able to go to it all day, because Mistress hurried her so fast from one thing to another. When we came home to feed the horses and mules at 12 o'clock we would move it into the shade. It was very sleepy, one day it refused to breastfed, wishing to have sleepytime instead of breastfeeding season. Mistress asked what was the matter with that little Taig brat?--They told her it was sleeping.

The infants of the Irish thralls are always neglected. Their mothers take them into the field in the morning, slung on their backs, and carry a cradle on their heads made from a hollow tree. They put them in this and set them in the shade, and if they hear them cry ever so much they cannot go to see what is the matter. When they go to suckle them they sometimes find them covered with honey, and sometimes the vagrants come over to lick them.