"My mother lived in a cabin--log, two rooms, one window, that is one
window in each room.
"They didn't have anything but homemade furniture. We never had no bed
bought from the store--nothin' like that. We just had something
sticking against the wall. It was built in a corner with one post out.
They made their table and used benches--two-legged and sometimes
four-legged. The two-legged benches was a long bench with a wide plank
at each end for legs.
"For food we got just what the white folks got. We didn't have no
quarters. They didn't have enough hands for that. They raised their
own meat. They had about seven or eight. There was Dan, Jess, Bill,
Steve. They bought Bill and Steve from Kentucky.
"Old 'Free Jack' Jenkins, a colored man, sold them two men to ol'
master. Jenkins was the only _Negro slave trader_ I ever knowed. He
brought them down one evening and the old man was a long time trading.
He made them run and jump and do everything before he would buy them.
He paid one thousand five hundred dollars for each one of them. 'Free
Jack' made him pay it part in silver and some in gold. He took some
Confederate paper. It was circulating then. But he wouldn't take much
of that paper money.
"He stole those boys from their parents in Kentucky. The boys said he
fooled them away from their homes with candy. Their parents didn't
know where they were.
"Then there were my brothers--two of them, John Alexander and William
Hamilton. They were half-brothers. That makes six men altogether on
the place. I might have made a miscount. There was old man Wash
Pearson and his two boys, Joe and Nathan. That made ten persons with
myself.
"Brumbaugh didn't have such a large family. I never did know how large
it was.