Chapter X: Part 10

"My father an' his brothers run away an' went to de Yankees. I heard daddy tell 'bout it. He got sick an' dey shipped him back home to North Carolina. Dey shifted niggers from place to place to keep de Yankees frum takin' 'em. When dere got to be too many Yankees in a place de slaves wus sent out to keep' em from bein' set free.

"Mother said onct when she wus carrying the cows to de pasture dey looked down de railroad an' everything wus blue. A nigger girl by the name of Susan wus with her. My mother wus named Rilla Pool. Dey said dey jus fell down an' de Yankees commenced sayin' 'Hello Dinah,' 'Hello Susie.' Mother an' Susan run. Dey just went flyin'. When dey crossed a creek my mother lost her shoe in de mud, but she just kept runnin'. When she got home she tole her missus de Yankees were ridin' up de railroad just as thick as flies. Den my great-grandmother said, 'Well I has been prayin' long enough for 'em now dey is here.' My great-grandmother wus named Nancy Pool an' she wus not afraid of nothin'. I wus a little teency thing when she died.

"My mother tole we all about dem times dey rode de horses up to de smoke house an' got de meat. De Yankees went to de clothes line an' got de clothes an' filled de legs an' arms wid corn an' slung it over dere saddles an' rode away. Yes, de Yankees freed us but dey lef' nuthin' for us to live on. Dey give us freedom but dey took mos' everything an' lef' us nuthin' to eat, nuthin' to live on.

"We lived in Wake County all de time. I did not git only to the third grade in school. Sister Mary Eliza got to de second grade. Father could write a little, mother couldn't. Couldn't go to school 'cept when it wus too wet to work. Work, work, work, thirty acres in cotton an' cawn, cawn plowed till de 15th of August, plow, plow, plow hard ground, bad ground. Nine girls an' one boy workin' from sun to sun. My mother had twenty-three chillun. She wus just as smart as she could be, worked in de field till just awhile before she died. She been dead 'bout twenty years. My father been dead 'bout ten years. He died right here in Raleigh with me, at 121 corner Mark an' Bledsoe Street.

"I've had a hard time workin' all my life. I ain't able to work now but I does all I can. I have places to work a little every day for my white folks. I am gwine to work long as I kin. My mother an' father said dey had good marsters an' dey were crazy 'bout 'em. Sometimes dey sold slaves an' den de patterollers whupped 'em now an' den, but dey had nuthin' to say against dere white folks.

"Well, I los' my home. I have worked mos' uv my life since I come to Raleigh, buyin' a home, but I got ole an' couldn't keep up de payments an' dey come down ere an' took my home. 'Twas the wurst thing dats come to me in my whole life. Less you tried it yo' can't 'magine how bad it makes you feel to have to give up yer home."

AC

N.C. District: No. 2 Worker: T. Pat Matthews No. Words: 398 Subject: HILLIARD YELLERDAY (A SLAVE STORY) Reference: Hilliard Yellerday Editor: George L. Andrews

HILLIARD YELLERDAY 1112 Oakwood Avenue, Raleigh North Carolina.

"My mother and father told me many interesting stories of slavery and of its joys and sorrows. From what they told me there was two sides to the picture. One was extremely bad and the other was good.

"These features of slavery were also dependent on the phases of human attitude and temperment which also was good or bad. If the master was broadminded, with a love in his heart for his fellowman, his slaves were at no disadvantage because of their low social standing and their lack of a voice in the civil affairs of the community, state, and nation. On the other hand if the master was narrowminded, overbearing and cruel the case was reversed and the situation the slaves were placed in caused a condition to exist concerning their general welfare that was bad and the slave was as low socially as the swine or other animals on the plantation.

"Some owners gave their slaves the same kind of food served on their own tables and allowed the slaves the same privileges enjoyed by their own children. Other masters fed their slave children from troughs made very much like those from which the hogs of the plantation were fed. There were many instances where they were given water in which the crumbs and refuse from the masters table had been placed. They gathered around this food with gourds and muscle shells from the fresh-water creeks and ate from this trough. Such a condition was very bad indeed."

[HW: begin]

"My mother was named Maggie Yellerday, and my father was named Sam Yellerday. They belonged to Dr. Jonathan Yellerday, who owned a large plantation and over a hundred slaves. His plantation looked like a small town. He had blacksmith shops, shoe shops, looms for weaving cloth, a corn mill, and a liquor distillery. There was a tanyard covering more than a quarter of an acre where he tanned the hides of animals to use in making shoes. There was a large bell they used to wake the slaves, in the morning, and to call them to their meals during the day. He had carriages and horses, stable men and carriage men. The carriage master and his family rode in was called a coach by the slaves on the plantation. His house had eighteen rooms, a large hall, and four large porches. The house set in a large grove about one mile square and the slave quarters were arranged in rows at the back of master's great house. The nearest cabins were about one hundred yards from it.

"Dr. Jonathan Yellerday looked after slaves' health and the food was fair, but the slaves were worked by overseers who made it hard for them, as he allowed them to whip a slave at will. He had so many slaves he did not know all their names. His fortune was his slaves. He did not sell slaves and he did not buy many, the last ten years preceding the war. He resorted to raising his own slaves.

"When a girl became a woman she was required to go to a man and become a mother. There was generally a form of marriage. The master read a paper to them telling them they were man and wife. Some were married by the master laying down a broom and the two slaves, man and woman would jump over it. The master would then tell them they were man and wife and they could go to bed together. Master would sometimes go and get a large hale hearty Negro man from some other plantation to go to his Negro woman. He would ask the other master to let this man come over to his place to go to his slave girls. A slave girl was expected to have children as soon as she became a woman. Some of them had children at the age of twelve and thirteen years old. Negro men six feet tall went to some of these children.

"Mother said there were cases where these young girls loved someone else and would have to receive the attentions of men of the master's choice. This was a general custom. This state of affairs tended to loosen the morals of the Negro race and they have never fully recovered from its effect. Some slave women would have dozens of men during their life. Negro women who had had a half dozen mock husbands in slavery time were plentiful. The holy bonds of matrimony did not mean much to a slave. The masters called themselves Christians, went to church worship regularly and yet allowed this condition to exist. Mother, father, sister and I were sent as refugees from Mississippi to N.C. They were afraid the Yankees would get us in Mississippi. I was only four years old when the war ended as I was born April 6, 1861 so I do not remember the trip. We were sent to Warren County to the Brownloe's plantation where we stayed until the war ended.

"There was a question as to just what Mississippi would do and then mother said the Doctor feared we would be taken by the Yankees there so he sent us to N.C. to the above named County. Mother was sent to stay with Mrs. Green Parrish and she took me with her. Mr. Green Parrish was gone to the war. In the last of the war, he was wounded and sent home. While he was recovering I fanned the flies off him. That's the first thing I remember about the war. When he got well he went back and then the war soon ended. After the war ended father and the family moved to Halifax County and worked on a farm belonging to Mr. Sterling Johnston. I was in Warren County when I first began to remember anything and I do not have any specific remembrance of the Yankees. We stayed in Halifax County eighteen years, going from one plantation to another, but we made no money. The landlords got all we made except what we ate and wore. They would always tell us we ate ours up. Sometimes we would be almost naked, barefooted and hungry when the crop was housed and then the landlord would make us leave. We would go to another with about the same results.

"There was a story going that each slave would get forty acres of land and a mule at the end of the war. The Yankees started this story but the mule and land was never given and slaves were turned out without anything and with nowhere to go.

"We moved to Wake County and I farmed until 1903. I had not gotten one hundred dollars ahead in all this time so I got a job with the railroad, S.A.L. Shops in Raleigh, N.C. and that is the only place I ever made any money.

"Father died in 1900 and mother in 1923. I worked from 1903 until 1920 with the S.A.L. Railroad as flunkey. I worked as box packer and machinist's helper. Mother and father died without ever owning a house but I saved my money while working for the Railroad Company and bought this lot 157 X 52-1/2 and had this house built on it. The house has five rooms and cost about one thousand dollars. I've been so of late years I could not pay my taxes. I am partially blind and unable to work anymore."

EH

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Transcriber's Notes

All footnotes use numbers for consistency, and are reindexed.

Contractions match original text and are inconsistent due to the variety of narrators and interviewers.

Page 5: Retained "Progro Marshells" and "Provo Marshell" inconsistency.

Pages 425-427 and 431-433: Retained inconsistent spellings for "Yelladay", "Yellady", and "Yellerday".

Handwritten edits to punctuation, nested quotation marks, and the following typos have been corrected:

Page 24: Changed "wnated" to "wanted" (I wnated ter go wid him).

Page 35: Changed "ha" to "he" (an' when ha azed dem who dey wus).

Page 45: Changed "Ca8olina" to "Carolina" (de No'th Ca8olina line).

Page 67: Changed "do" to "de" (set fire to do cotton).

Page 167: Changed "creulty" to "cruelty" (stops creulty on plantation).

Page 170: Changed "sn'" to "an'" (Jake, sn' he 'longed ter a family).

Page 249: Changed "I8d" to "I'd" (I8d learn ah half uh chaptuh) and
(an I8d write stories about Christ).