~4~ir. ~)	~ :*~
	Cape Girardeau Co.	Folklore.	~
?age 1.

INT~RVI~ iWITH BETTY ABERNATHY
(Ex-SLAVE)

	“~Iy muthuh brought me to Cape Girardeau in 1862, an‘ I was ‘bout ten yeah old‘ àt dat time. Huh name was 1~alisaa Abernathy an‘ she tole‘ me that ‘01e Massa‘ John Aberimthy was mah daddy. ‘01e Massa‘ was mean to his cullud folks end so was ‘01e 1~ji8si8 ~Wi11ie‘ .

	“VVe lived up in Perry County. The white folk had a nice big house an‘ they was a number of poor little cabins- Là‘ us folks. Our‘s was one room, built of..iogs, an‘ had a puncheori floor. ‘01e ‘Massa‘ ~ad a. number of slaves but we didden~ have no
	school, ‘ner church an‘ mighty little merry-makin‘. M~os‘ly, we went barefooted the	~
	yeah ‘round. •
	    “My muthuh an‘ some of the othuh women done the weavin‘ an‘ sewin‘ • I learned	~
	to~pin, I could fill broaches and spin as good as any of ‘em‘. One time ‘01e‘ Tom
	Johnson, the ‘nigger~buyer~ come up frum Little Rock. He was go‘in to buy m~huh
	an‘ her family, and t ake us t o Arkansas ‚ but ‚ bout t hat t ime they wù so much talk
	‘bout freein‘ the slaves, he was ‘fraid to. •	~

	“~1ostly we had right fair satin‘s. We didn‘t go into the big house much, jee‘~ on c1eanin‘~idays an‘ such like.

	“01e Massa‘ often hired lùscullu,d folks out to neighbuh farmuh an‘ he didden‘ ‚ care hoi~ they was treated. One time my two brothers was hired out an‘ in the evenin‘ ~ they~came an‘ tole rnuthuh they was gèin‘ to run away ‘caus~ they‘s treated so mean. She begged ‘em Îaöt to come there to hide ‘cause they‘d find ‘em ‘shore, an‘ most likely kill ‘em right before her eyes. They got away an‘ ‘pie Massa‘ cometo the T cabin to search fo‘ ‘em. When inuthuh tole him she didn‘t know where they was, he tied a rope ‘round huh neck, an‘ tied the other end to th~ raftuhe. Then he beat her to make her tell. ~ ~ ~ ‚ ‚

	“Aftuh thü we was treated so mean that a neighbor helped us escape. We-all got in a big wagon, ‘bout ten or twelve of us, an‘ druv us to the Cape, where they‘s
rse ~	j protect us.