3.	j




	“The Yankees, when they come in the yard that morning, told my father he was free, I remember ~ that myaelf4 They ccme up riding horses arid cari‘ylfl‘ long old guns with bayonets on them, and told him. They rode all over the country from one place to another telling the riggers they were free. Ma8ter didn‘t get a chance to tell us because he left whezi he saw them Comm ‚.

	“When my mother and father were living on the plantation, they lived in an old frame building. A portion of it was log. My father stayed with the Calverts~«-‘his wife‘s white folks. At first old man Webb sold him to them; then he bought him back and bought my mother too. They were together when freedom caxae0 You know they auctioned you off in slavery tine. Every year, they would, they put you up on the auction block and buy and selle That was down in Georgia. ~e wa8 ix~ Georgia when we was freed..-4n Atlanta, My father and mother had fourteen children altogether. My mother died the year aeter we cor~ie out here • That would be about 18?5, ~ I never had but three children becau8e my wife died early. Two of them are dead.

	“Right after freedom, my father plaited baskets and mata. He shucked mops, put handles on rakes and did things like that in addition to his ~annin~0 He was a blacksmith all the time too. He used to plait collars for mules. He farmed and got his harvests in season. The other things would be a help to him between times.

	“My father caine here because he thought that there was a better situa~a tion here than in Georgia. Or course ‚ the living was better there because they had plenty of fruit. Then he worked on a third and fourth. He got one bale of cotton out of every three he made. The slaves left many a plantation and they would grow up in weeds. When a man would clear up the ground like th1~ and plant it down in something, he would get all he planted on it,