They did those things on the plantation. They cured goat skins and sheep
skins, too. The sheep skins would dry so slowly that they would let the
slaves lie on them at night to keep them warm and hasten the drying.
17. As a young person what sort of work did you do? If you helped your
mother around the house or cut firewood or swept the yard, say so.
I cleaned and dusted and waited on the table, made beds and put
everything in order, washed dishes, polished silverware and did the most
trusty work.
18. When you were a child do you remember how people wove cloth, or spun
thread, or picked out cotton seed, or weighed cotton, or what sort of
bag was used on the cotton bales?
I did not need to spin but I used to play with the spinning wheels. They
ginned the cotton on the plantation. They used a horse to pull the gin.
They weighed the cotton with a beam and weight. A good slave picked 200
lbs of cotton in a day. Nancy could pick 300 or 400 lbs in a day. She'd
go out early in the day and run in ahead of the sun and no one would
know she had been out. That's how she would get ahead of the rest.
19. Do you remember what sort of soap they used? How did they get the
lye for making the soap?
They made soft soap boiled in a big kettle. They made the lye out of
ashes packed in an old barrel that had a hole in the bottom. They would
make a hollow in the top of the barrel and pour rain water in it. This
would gradually soak through the ashes and seep out of the bottom of the
barrel which they tipped up so that it would drain the lye out into a
vessel. Then they would take the lye and boil it in the kettle with old
grease and meat rinds. The lye was very strong. They had to be careful
not to get any of it on their hands or it would take the skin off. As
they would stir the grease and lye it would foam and cook like a jelly
and when it cooled we had soft soap. It would sure chase the dirt, but
it was hard on the hands.
20. What did they use for dyeing thread and cloth, and how did they dye
them?
They would dig indigo roots and cook the roots and branches for blue
dye. For purple they mixed red and blue. They would pick the berries off
the gallberry bushes for red. The robin's yellow and mixed yellow and
red for orange; and yellow and blue for green.
21. Did your mother use big, wooden washtubs with cut-out holes on each
side for the fingers?
Yes. We made cedar tubs on the plantation. And we had some men who made
large wooden bowls out of juggles cut from logs of the tupla tree. They
would run them through a machine and they would come out round and then
they would smooth them down. They mixed bread in those big bowls.