project #1655
	HenrY Grant ‚	3 9 0 3 5 4	 ~ . ~t	26
	Columbia, ~. C.		‚
	180M RO~3ERTS
	:~x-5LAvE 80 YEARS OLD	~ ~



	Isom Roberts rents one room at 1226 W~averly Street, Colunibia, S. C., arid livez alone. However frail he appears, he is able to support himself by ‘~vorking in the yards about the city. .

	s, ~li,~sir, white folks, I is eighty yearsold, or leastwise I is s~


close to it, dat it don‘t make much difference. But even if I is dat old, it don‘t seem so long since I was a little boy. Years flies by mighty fas‘ to old folks ‚ ‘cause deir ‘memberonce is shorter ‚ v~kiile young folks ‘members everything, and in dat way months and years drags ‘long slower to them.

	t, I was a very small boy when de Civil ~Var was gwine on. It seems like I knows all ‘bout Sherman‘s army comnin‘ through dis State, a burnin‘ Colum‘bis. and d~stroyi~i‘ and takin‘ away everything what folks had. I has heard so much ‘bout slavery and all them times, from my mammy and daddy, dat it ‘pears to me dat I ‘sperienced it all. I ‘spects knowin‘ ‘bout things is just ‘bout as good a~id true as seem‘ them. Don‘t you?

	t, My daddy ~md mamnniy b‘long to Marster SamL~ouie, who had a big pl&n-‘

tati on over in Calhoun Cotuity . ~ had ‘bo ut fifty ùr more grown si ayes, ‘sides me.ny chillun of de slaves~ Old marster was a good farmer; raised big crops end saved what he made. He shoe was a fine business r~n but he was mighty hard on everybody he had anything to do wid • He to Id his slaves to work hard and make him a heap of money and that he would keep it, in case of hard times. Times i~rns all de time hard wid old marstef but de nig— gera never got no money. When news spread ‘round dat de Yankees was cornin‘

to free de niggers, he called ai]. de slaves up in de yard and showed them