Charlotte Foster
From:
South Carolina
Project 1885 -1-
District #4
Spartanburg, S.C.
May 28, 1937
FOLKLORE: EX-SLAVES
Six miles east of Spartanburg on R.F.D. No. 2, the writer found Aunt
Charlotte Foster, a colored woman who said she was 98 years old. Her
mother was Mary Johnson and her father's name was John Johnson. She is
living with her oldest daughter, whose husband is John Montgomery.
She stated she knew all about slavery times, that she and her mother
belonged to William Beavers who had a plantation right on the main road
from Spartanburg to Union, that the farm was near Big Brown Creek, but
she didn't know what larger stream the creek flowed into. Her father
lived on another place somewhere near Limestone. She and her mother were
hands on the farm and did all kinds of hard work. She used to plow, hoe,
dig and do anything the men did on the plantation. "I worked in the hot
sun." Every now and then she would get a sick headache and tell her
master she had it; then he would tell her to go sit down awhile and rest
until it got better.
She had a good master; he was a Christian if there ever was one. He had
a wife that was fussy and mean. "I didn't call her Mistus, I called her
Minnie." But, she quickly added, "Master was good to her, just as kind
and gentle like." When asked what was the matter with the wife, she just
shook her head and did not reply. Asked if she had rather live now or
during slavery times, she replied that if her master was living she
would be willing to go back and live with him. "Every Sunday he would
call us chilluns by name, would sit down and read the Bible to us; then
he would pray. If that man ain't in the Kingdom, then nobody's there."
She said her master never whipped any of the slaves, but she had heard
cries and groans coming from other plantations at five o'clock in the
morning where the slaves were being beaten and whipped. Asked why the
slaves were being beaten, she replied rather vehemently, "Just because
they wanted to beat 'em; they could do it, and they did." She said she
had seen the blood running down the backs of some slaves after they had
been beaten.
One day a girl about 16 years of age came to her house and said she'd
just as leave be dead as to take the beatings her master gave her, so
one day she did go into the woods and eat some poison oak. "She died,
too."
On one plantation she saw an old woman who used to get so many beatings
that they put a frame work around her body and ran it up into a kind of
steeple and placed a bell in the steeple. "Dat woman had to go around
with that bell ringing all the time."
"I got plenty to eat in dem days, got just what the white folks ate. One
day Master killed a deer, brung it in the house, and gave me some of the
meat. There was plenty of deer den, plenty of wild turkeys, and wild
hogs. Master told me whenever I seed a deer to holler and he would kill
it."
When slaves were freed her mother moved right away to her father's
place, but she said the two sons of her master would not give her mother
anything to eat then. "Master was willing, but dem boys would not give
us anything to live on, not even a little meal."
"After the Civil War was over and the Yankee soldiers came to our place,
dey just took what they wanted to eat, went into de stable and leave
their poor, broken-down horses and would ride off with a good horse.
They didn't hurt anybody, but just stole all they wanted."
One day she said her master pointed out Abe Lincoln to her. A long line
of cavalry rode down the road and presently there came Abe Lincoln
riding a horse, right behind them. She didn't have much to say about
Jeff Davis, except she heard the grown people talking about him. "Booker
Washington? Well, he was all right trying to help the colored people and
educate them. But he strutted around and didn't do much. People ought to
learn to read the Bible, but if you educate people too high it make a
fool out of them. They won't work when they gets an education, just
learns how to get out of work, learns how to steal enough to keep alive.
They are not taught how to work, how do you expect them to work when
they ain't taught to work? Well, I guess I would steal too before I
starved to death, but I ain't had to steal yet. No man can say he ever
gave me a dollar but what I didn't earn myself. I was taught to work and
I taught my chilluns to work, but this present crowd of niggers! They
won't do."
She stated her mother had twelve children and the log house they lived
in was weatherboarded; it was much warmer in such a house during cold
weather than the houses are now. "Every crack was chinked up with mud
and we had lots of wood." Her mother made all their beds, and had four
double beds sitting in the room. She made the ticking first and placed
the straw in the mattresses. "They beat the beds you can get now. These
men make half beds, den sell 'em to you, but dey ain't no good. Dey
don't know how to make 'em."
Aunt Charlotte said she remembered when the stars fell. "That was
something awful to see. Dey just fell in every direction. Master said to
wake the chilluns up and let 'em see it. Everybody thought the world was
coming to an end. We went out on de front porch to look at the sight;
we'd get scared and go back into de house, den come out again to see the
sight. It was something awful, but I sure saw it." (Records show that
the great falling of stars happened in the year 1833, so Aunt Charlotte
must be older than she claims, if she saw this eventful sight. Yet she
was positive she had seen the stars falling all over the heavens. She
made a sweep of her arm from high to low to illustrate how they fell.)
=Source:= Aunt Charlotte Foster, RFD #2, Spartanburg, S.C.
Interviewer: F.S. DuPre, Spartanburg, S.C.
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