Margaret Green
From:
Georgia Narratives, Part 2
EX-SLAVE INTERVIEW:
MARGARET GREEN
1430 Jones Street
Augusta, Georgia.
(Richmond County)
BY: Mrs. Margaret Johnson
Editor
Federal Writers' Project,
Augusta, Georgia.
EX-SLAVE INTERVIEW
Margaret Green,
1430 Jones Street,
Augusta, Georgia
(Richmond County)
Margaret Green, 1430 Jones Street was born in 1855 on the plantation of
Mr. Cooke McKie in Edgefield County, South Carolina.
Margaret's house was spotlessly clean, her furniture of the golden oak
type was polished, and the table cover and sideboard scarfs were
beautifully laundered. Margaret is a small, trim little figure dressed
in a grey print dress with a full gathered skirt and a clean, starched
apron with strings tied in a big bow. She has twinkling eyes, a kindly
smile and a pleasant manner.
"Yes, mam, I remembers slavery times very well. I wuz a little girl but
I could go back home and show you right where I wuz when the sojers come
through our place with their grey clothes and bright brass buttons. They
looked mighty fine on their hosses ridin' round. I could show you right
where those sojers had the camp".
Margaret described "the quarters" and told of the life. "Each fam'ly had
a garden patch, and could raise cotton. Only Marse Cooke raised cotton;
what we raised we et".
"Margaret were the slaves on your master's plantation mistreated?"
"What you say? Mistreat? Oh! you mean whipped! Yes, man, sometime Marse
Cooke whip us when we need it, but he never hurt nobody. He just give
'em a lick or two make 'em mind they business. Marse Cooke was a good
man, and he never let a overseer lay a finger on one of his niggers!"
"Margaret were you ever whipped?"
Margaret laughed; with her eyes twinkling merrily she replied, "Marse
Cooke say he wuz gonna whip me 'cause I was so mischievious. He was on
his horse. I broke and run, and Marse ain't give me that whippin' till
yet!"
"Yes, mam, I hearn stories o' ghos'es and hants, but I never did b'lieve
in none of 'em. I uster love to play and to get out of all the work I
could. The old folk on the plantashun uster tell us younguns if we
didn't hurry back from the spring with the water buckets, the hants and
buggoos would catch us. I ain't never hurry till yet, and I never see a
hant. I wished I could, 'caus' I don't b'lieve I would be scart."
"Margaret, did you learn to read?"
"Oh! no mam, that wus sumpin' we wuzn't 'lowed to do; nobody could have
lessons. But we went to Church to the Publican Baptist Church. Yes, mam,
I'se sho' dat wuz the name--the Publican Baptist Church--ain't I been
there all my life 'till I been grown and married? We uster go mornin'
and evenin', and the white people sat on one side and the slaves on the
other."
Margaret said her mother was a seamstress and also a cook. Three other
seamstresses worked on the plantation. There was a spinning wheel and a
loom, and all the cotton cloth for clothing was woven and then made into
clothes for all the slaves. There were three shoe makers on the place
who made shoes for the slaves, and did all the saddle and harness
repair.
Margaret was asked who attended the slaves when they were sick.
"Marse Cooke's son was a doctor", she replied, and he 'tended anybody
who was bad sick. Granny Phoebe was the midwife at our plantashun and
she birthed all the babies. She was old when I was a little gal, and she
lived to be 105. Marse Cooke never let any of his slaves do heavy work
'till dey wuz 18 years old." Margaret's father went to the war with
"Marse Cooke" as his body servant, and her mother went also, to cook for
him!
"To tell you the truth, man," said the old woman, "I 'member more 'bout
that war back yonder than I member 'bout the war we had a few years
ago."
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Alberta Minor
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Edwin Driskell
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