I've been into genealogy since writing my Mathews book
and as any genealogist knows, it's like eating peanuts. You just can't stop. It's easier for me than for a lot of other genealogist, however, because so many generations of my family lived in the same place: Mathews County, Virginia. I've often looked at the names and details about the individuals in my extended paternal and maternal lines and wondered if they knew each other, fought side by side at the Battle of Gwynn's Island, went to the same church. Some were rich and some were poor. Another thing they say about genealogy is that you better watch out about finding that skeleton in your closet. Yes, there are a few in mine. Although they were men of their times and I don't think they were necessarily evil, I feel sad and am sorry about their actions. Most of the skeletons in my closet have to do with my ancestors involvement in the slave trade and slavery, as slave owners and overseers.
Recently, a Foster family relative shared a book with me, We Lived in a Little Cabin in the Yard
, edited by Belinda Hurmence (Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 1994). It included the following interview with a former slave who belonged to a distant cousin of mine. Shep Miller's great grandfather and my sixth-great grandfather are the same man, John Foster, born 1686. Elizabeth Sparks
Interviewed at the courthouse in Mathews on January 13, 1937 by Claude J. Anderson
"My mistress's name was Miss Jennie Brown. She died about four years ago. Bless her. She was a good woman. 'Course I mean she'd slap and beat you once in a while, but she weren't no woman for fighting, fussing, and beating you all day, like some I know. 'Course no white folks perfect.
"Before Miss Jennie was married, she lived at her old home right up the river here. You can see the place from outside here.
"Her mother was a mean old thing. She'd beat you with a broom or a leather strap, or anything she'd get her hands on.
"She used to make my aunt Caroline knit all day, and when she get so tired after dark that she'd get sleepy, she'd make her stand up and knit. She work her so hard that she'd go to sleep standing up, and every time her head nod and her knees sag, the lady'd come down across her head with a switch.
"That was Miss Jennie's mother. She'd get the cook just so much meal to make bread from, and if she burnt it she be scared to death, because they'd whip her. I remember plenty of times the cook ask, say, "Massa, please excuse this bread: it's a little too brown." Yes sir! Beat the devil out her if she burn that bread.
"On the plantation my mother was a house woman. She had to wash white folks' clothes all day and hers after dark. Sometimes she'd be washing clothes way up around midnight. No sir, couldn't wash any nigger's clothes in daytime.
"Shep Miller was my master. Bought my mother, a little girl, when he was married. She was a real Christian and he respected her a little. Didn't beat her so much. 'Course he beat her once in a while. Beat women! Why, sure he beat women. Beat women just like men. Beat women naked and wash them down in brine.
"He was that way with them black folks. Shep Miller was terrible. Why, I remember time after he was dead when I'd peep in the closet and see his old clothes hanging there, and just fly. Yes sir, I'd run from them clothes; and I was just a little girl then. No, he ain't in heaven--went past heaven/
"Old Master done so much wrongness. I couldn't tell you all of it. Slave girl Betty Lilly always had good clothes and all the privileges. She was a favorite of his.
"Might as well quit looking at me. I ain't going to tell you any more. Can't tell you all I know--old Shep might come back and get me. Why, if I was to tell you the really bad things, some of them dead white folks would come right up out of their graves. But can't tell all! God's got all!
"Slaves went to bed when they didn't have anything to do. Most time they went to bed when they could. They worked six days from sun to sun. Usual work day began when the horn blow and stop when the horn blow. They get off just long enough to eat at noon. If they forcing wheat and other crops, they start to work long before day. Sometimes the men had to shuck corn till eleven and twelve o'clock at night.
"Didn't have much to eat. Well, they give the colored people an allowance every week. A woman with children would get about a half-bushel of meal a week; a childless woman would get about a peck and a half of meal a week. They get some suet and slice of bread for breakfast. For dinner they'd eat ashcake baked on blade of a hoe.
"The men on the road got one cotton shirt and jacket. If you was working they'd give you shoes. Children went barefooted the year around.
"Schools? Son, there weren't no schools for niggers. Niggers used to go way off in quarters and slip and have meetings. They called it "stealing the meeting." If you went out at night the pattyrollers would catch you, if you was out after time without a pass. If they catch them they beat them half to death. Most of the slaves was afraid to go out.
"Plenty of slaves ran away. Sometimes they beat them so bad they just couldn't stand it, and they run away to the woods. If you get in the woods they couldn't get you. You could hide and people slop you something to eat.
"They had colored foremen, but they always have a white overseer. After a while, he tell one of colored foremen, tell you come on back, he ain't going to beat you anymore. Foreman get you to come back and then he beat you to death again. That's the way the white folks, was. But you know, there's good and bad people everywhere. Some had hearts; some had gizzards instead of hearts.
"I lived in Seaford then and was around fifteen or sixteen when my mistress married. I remember just as well when they gave me to Jennie. We was all in a room helping her dress, and she turns around and says to us, "Which of you niggers you think I'm going to get when I get married?"
"We all say, "I don't know."
"And she looks right at me and point her finger at me like this and said, "You!"
"I was so glad. She was just a young thing. She didn't beat. 'Course she take a whack at me sometime, but that weren't nothing.
"I went with Miss Jennie and worked at house. I didn't have to cook. I slept in my mistress's room, but I ain't slept in any bed. No sir! I slept on a carpet, an old rug, before the fireplace.
"I had to get permission to go to church; everybody did. We could sit in the gallery in the white folks' service in the morning, and in the evening the folks held baptize service in the gallery with white present.
"I was about nineteen when I married. My husband lived on another plantation. I got permission to get married. You always had to get permission. White folks would give you away. You jump across a broomstick together, and you was married.
"I was married in 1861. My oldest boy was born in 1862, and the falling of Richmond came in 1865.
"Shep went to war, but not for long. We didn't see none of it, but the slaves knew what the war was about. The slaves wanted freedom, but they's scared to tell the white folks so. They sent some of the slaves to South Carolina when the Yankees came near, to keep the Yankees from getting them. Sent Cousin James to South Carolina.
"After the war they tried to fool the slaves about freedom, and wanted to keep them on a-working--white folks' heads was just going to keep on having slaves. But the Yankees told them they was free.
"I never will forget when the Yankees came through. They was taking all the livestock and all the men slaves back to Norfolk with them, to break up the system. What tickled me was my husband, John Sparks. He didn't want to leave me and go, because he didn't know where they was taking them nor what they was going to do, so he played lame to keep from going. He was just a-limping around. It was all I could do to keep from laughing.
"I can hear Miss Jennie now, yelling at them Yankees: "No! Who are you to judge? I'll be the judge. If John Sparks wants to stay here he'll stay."
"They was going to take him anyhow, and he went inside to pack, and the baby started crying. So one of them said that as long as he had a wife and a baby that young, they guessed he could stay.
"Anyway, the Yankees was giving everything to the slaves. I can hear them telling old Mistress now, "Yes! Give her clothes. Let her take anything she wants."
"They even took some of Miss Jennie's things and offered them to me. I didn't take them, though, because she'd been pretty nice to me. They took all the horses, cows, and pigs and chickens and anything they could use and left.
"When my mother's master died he called my mother and brother Major and got religion and talked so pretty. He say he so sorry that he hadn't found the Lord before and had nothing against his colored people. He was sorry and scared, but confessed.
"Now, you take that and go. Put that in the book. You can make out with that. It ain't no sense for you to know all about those mean white folks. They meant good, I reckon. They all dead now. Leastways, most of them got salvation on their death beds.
"The end of time is at hand, anyway. The Bible say when it gets so you can't tell one season from the other, the world's coming to end. Here it is, so warm in winter that it feels like summer."
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