DADE COUNTY, FIA~R]DA, FOIXLOR~
Ex-Slaves


	Reverend Eli Boyd was born May 29, 1864, four miles from Somerville, South Carolina on John Murray‘s plantation. It was a large plantation with perhaps one hundred slaves and their ~em1l1es. As he was only a tiny baby when freedom came, he had no “recomembrance“ of~ the real slavery days, but he lived on the same plantation for many years until his father and mother died in 1888.


	III worked on the plentatioL just like they did in the real slavery days, only I received a en~l1 wage. I~picked cotton and thinned rice. I always did just what they told me to do and didn‘t ever get Into any trouble, except once aM that was my own fault.


	“You see it was this way. They gave me a bucket of thick clabber to take to the hogs. I was hungry and took the bucket and sat down behind the barn and ate every bit of it. I didn‘t know it would make me sick, but was I sick? I swelled up so that I all but bust. They had to doctor on me. They took soot out of the chimney and mixed it with salt and made me take that. I guess they saved my life, for I was awful sick.

	“1 never learned to read until I was 26 year s old • That was after I left the plantation. I was staying at a place washing dishes for Goodyear‘s at Sapville, Georgia, six miles from Waycrose. I found a ‘Nebster ‚ s spelling book that had been thrown away, and I learned to read from that.


	nI wasn‘t converted until I went to work in a turpentine still
	.	~ 12354