OLD MASSA'S PEOPLE: The Old Slaves Tell Their Story

By Orland Kay Armstrong

O. K. Armstrong, founder of the University of Florida School of Journalism and former U. S. Congressman from Missouri was an early proponent of civil rights for African-Americans and Native Americans. Armstrong spent many years during the Great Depression researching this portrayal of the culture of old Dixie by interviewing, in every state of t

• Language: English
• Publisher: American Freedom Publications LLC
• Release date: May 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637523834

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD

US PEOPLE OF OLE VIRGINNY

PLANTATION DAYS

HOW COME WE HERE

THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT

CHILLUN ROUN’ DE PLACE

YOUNG FOLKS GROWING UP

THE BIG HOUSE

SERVIN’ IN DE MANSION HOUSE

NEW MASSA AND MISSUS

GAY TIMES

PATTYROLLERS

COURTING DAYS

HERE COMES THE BRIDE

BABIES IN THE QUARTERS

SMARTEST SERVANTS

HOSSES AND CARRIAGES

IN DE FIEL’

OLE-TIME RELIGION

SONGS WE SANG

CONJUR STUFF

AUCTION BLOCK

DARK CLOUDS

THE STORM BREAKS

WITH COLORS FLYING

DE YANKEES COMIN’

FREEDOM

CARPETBAGGER TIMES

WHAR DE ROAD LEAD

ARLINGTON

OLD MASSA CALLING

O. K. ARMSTRONG’S ORIGINAL NOTES ON THE BOOK

LEE MEETS DEFEAT AT GETTYSBURG

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES

FOREWORD

Orland Kay Armstrong was a husband, father, freelance journalist, writer, publisher and educator. He would found the University of Florida’s School of Journalism and go on to become the United States Congressman from the 6th District of Missouri. Armstrong was a crusader for Justice and warrior for Truth, inspired by his Faith to serve his fellow citizens. He was a brilliant and well-educated man. He had many earned academic degrees and would go on to receive many other honorary degrees before he passed away on April 15, 1987 in Springfield, Missouri.

Orland Kay Armstrong was referred to as O. K., by his friends. He was an often reluctant, but aggressive warrior who sought the Truth, defended Liberty and was a crusader for Peace and champion of the Underdog. His contributions to these righteous causes have gone unrecognized even in the state of his birth, Missouri. Here you have a man who fought for the recognition of African-Americans as equal citizens before there was a Civil Rights movement. He also brought to the forefront the plight of Native Americans and proposed corrective actions.

This book was originally published in 1931 by Bobbs-Merrill Company of Indianapolis. Armstrong spent many years during the Great Depression researching this portrayal of the culture of old Dixie by interviewing, in every state of the old Confederacy, more than twelve hundred former slaves in their ninth to eleventh decades of life. He was skilled as an interviewer, making his subjects feel at ease. He was at home with any group without regard to its members’ profession or to their current or ancestral culture. The original purpose of the book was to depict the Old South as the Negro saw it. The book compiles the stories of those brought into the sphere of cruel traders and owners as depicted in the critically acclaimed ROOTS by Alex Haley as well as the stories of those more fortunate, of whom Mammy in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind is a reminder. Many of these slaves were brought into the inner sanctum of the owner’s family, but many others were not. Slavery was, and still is an evil practice the exists in some parts of the world.

Armstrong recorded the interviews in this book in their vernacular and did so with a respect, fondness or even a kinship with those he interviewed. He wrote in the margin of his 1930 notes for the book: What they need: 1) Justice; 2) Education; 3) Special industrial training --Make the Negro an asset.

O. K. Armstrong was an early proponent of civil rights for African-Americans and Native Americans. Today, political forces have distorted the truth about the plight of black slaves in the South. The agrarian economy of the South was pre-industrial and slavery was the unfortunate result. Of course there was racial abuse in the South and in the North, that is uncontested, but that was not the norm according to the black slaves themselves. Their story is presented in their own words in OLD MASSA’S PEOPLE. The subjects of these interviews often used the n word, so it appears in this book just as in the original publication in 1931.

  Recent events have overtaken the truth in this matter and there are evil forces re-writing the history of slavery in America in order to divide the Nation once again. But this book by O. K. Armstrong is an actual history of slavery in the South written by a truly investigative journalist.

While it is clear that those in the Confederacy were traitors to the Union, many were protecting what they thought to be their homeland. This was a decision that General Robert E. Lee made as a Virginian. It was the wrong decision, but the matter was settled with the defeat of the South. The story of Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg was chronicled by O. K. Armstrong in his book THE FIFTEEN DECISIVE BATTLES OF THE UNITED STATES. An excerpt from that book, Chapter Eleven Lee’s Defeat at Gettysburg is presented at the end of this book.

The true hero of that earlier time was President Abraham Lincoln who recognized that the Nation would need to heal. Today, while anarchists and Marxists are toppling the statutes of Lee and other symbols of the Confederacy, they are also toppling and defacing statues of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and even great abolitionists. The mindless mob will never read OLD MASSA’S PEOPLE, and that is unfortunate. But herein, the Armstrong family has provided you the opportunity to read about slavery days from the perspective of the slaves themselves and in their own words as published in 1931.

Martin Capages Jr. PhD

Author of SHOW-ME WARRIOR: O. K. Armstrong of Missouri

Shape Description automatically generated with medium confidence

DEDICATION

To My Wife

Louise McCool Armstrong 

Fair Granddaughter of the Old South

I Affectionately Inscribe This

Story of Slavery Days

Orland Kay Armstrong

1931

CHAPTER ONE

US PEOPLE OF OLE VIRGINNY

From Ole Virginny

How you feelin’ this mawnin’? Hopes you feelin’ well! Me, I’se gettin’ ’long fine! This is the cook an’ body-servant fo’ah Marse Robert E. Lee durin’ the War, speakin’ to you! Uncle William Mack Lee bows to you in grand fashion. He holds his big black hat in his hand. His copper-black face, fringed with white beard, is all broken out in smiles while his ancient eyes dance with joy. Uncle William wears a long gray coat, almost covered in front with medals representing attendance at Confederate reunions for many years past. The old colored man chuckles and bows again.

Yes suh, I’se one o’ the Lee people, from Ole Virginny. Bawn June twelve, eighteen-thutty-seven, at Marse Robert’s place in Westmoreland County. One o’ the fines’ places in Virginny. Went through the War with Marse Ginneral Lee, an’ tuk keer o’ him. Listen, whilst I tell you all some things 'bout the Lee people---

And Uncle William is off on his story, his words rolling along in a rich tide-water Virginia accent. Picturesque character, is Uncle William, eager to recount his adventures with Marse Robert, but courteous and affable with all the fine charm of an old Virginia colored man of an important

family in the last century. For many years he has been making his way about the South, delivering speeches wherever he can get an audience and attending Confederate reunions. Uncle William admits with many a chuckle that he has been galavantin’ round over the country right smart during the five decades past. But he adds: I been mos’ly makin’ friends!

The old Confederate veterans know Uncle William. They know he stood by as a young body-servant and held the reins of Traveler, famous white charger of General Lee, at Appomattox Court House. This colored man is to be immortalized in granite in the colossal Stone Mountain memorial in Georgia.  He is spending his last days in a modest but comfortable home in Norfolk, among friends of both races who honor him.

When Lieutenant Robert E. Lee married Mary Custis in1831 and brought her from Arlington to Stratford House and his estate in Westmoreland County, he had among his servants the father and mother of William. The mother died when William was eighteen months old, and he says that Missus Mary took an especial interest in him, rearing him practically in the Big House. Uncle William tells of how when he was a boy Marse Robert freed all his slaves, and paid them all to stay right on and work for him.

"Now when I’se small, Marse Robert gone mos’ the time.  He was a soldier all his life.  Had to go off to he’p Ginneral Winfield Scott whip the Mexicans.  Sad time fer all the white folks.  Hated ter see him go.    But we all knowed he’d come back!    Too good a fighter to git whipped down

thar! Fac’ is, he was the mos’ valuable officer in the Mex-

ican War. They say he done mos’ as much wu’k as er gin-

neral. Scott, he plan the war, an’ Marse Robert, he fought it! Leastwise they made him a captain, an’ promoted him up to lieutenan’ cunnel. 

"Well suh, when the Mexicans was whipped, back Marse Robert come. He stay at Stratford House a while, an’ I’se  big ’nough to take keer of him. Missus Mary, she say: ‘William, git the hot water basin, an’ bathe his feet!’ I’d git the basin, an’ castile soap, an’ bathe his feet. I black his shoes, an’ ’range his clo’es. 

Lee was a fine-lookin’ man. Full-blooded ‘ristocrat, but kind ter ever’ livin’ creature.  He trim his beard nice, an’ dress in spankin’ new blue uniform. Yes suh! It was blue. Folks think of Ginneral Lee gray all time. Don’ seem ter recolleck he wore blue uniform _'till he lay it off fo’ah the gray when the Confederate War come on. An’ one thing mos’ folks don’ know: it wrench his heart right considerable when he haf’ to make the change!

"Well suh, I he’p take keer o’ his three boys. They was

Young Bob Lee, Roney Lee an’ William H. Lee. I play with ‘em, he’p ’em saddle up they hosses, an’, run erran’s fer ’em. All time I’se growin’ up. Oh, we had great times! Mos’ ever’ time Marse Robert come home, if it was cool weather, we’d go huntin’. ‘Toot-oot-oo-oo—ootl!’ I can hy’ar that ole huntin’ horn yit! Mos’ always we’d ketch some ’possums, an’ sometimes foxes an’ squirrels."

"All the chillun growed up to be fine young folks. The boys wuh han’some, an’ the gals beautiful lak Missus Mary.

All kind to they servants. Never no whippin’, no cross words; had good houses, good clo’es, an’ the bes’ food in Virginny!

When I’se in my teens, Marse Lee spen’ mos’ his time surveyin’ harbors fo’ the War department. Folks think o’ Lee as er great ginneral. He was that. But befo’ han’, he’s a fus’-class engineer. Surveyed mos’ o’ the rivers from New Yawk to New Orleans. Knowed this country lak a book.  I’se mos’ grown, an’ Marse Lee tells all the servants the fam’ly goin’ move ’way from Stratford House. Goin’ ter Arlington, they was. Lots o’ bustlin’ round, gettin’ things ready. Sad times fo’ us cullud people. We don’ want ter see the bes’ Marster an’ Missus in the whole worl’ go off an’ leave us! But they went. Didn’ know whether I’se goin’ see Cunnel Lee ergain in my Whole life! But I saw him `plenty, all right! Five years later I join him in the War." . . .

Arlington People

Let us go up to Arlington, just across the winding Potomac from the City of Washington, to the girlhood home of Missus Mary Custis Lee. In the quiet Arlington village you’ll find Martha Smith and her brother Jim Parke. They are the last of all the several hundred colored servants who attended that noted family of the old Virginia aristocracy, Major George Washington Parke Custis and his household. I found Uncle Jim living with his daughter and her family in a cottage with a back yard shaded by apple and pear trees under one of which is an easy chair arranged special so the ole man can res’ himself, he explains.

Aunt Martha lives in a neat home near the Fairfax high-

way. She too has her easy chair, out on the front porch. She looks out over a neat front yard dotted with beds of flowers, and recalls the days when her mother was the chief spinnin’ an’ weavin’ woman for Major and Mary Custis, and for Colonel and Missus Robert E. Lee.

How come we’s connected with both fam’lies, she ex-

plains proudly, "was caise we fus’ b’longed to the Major, de gran’son of George Washington. When Custis’ Pappy died, Washington tuk him ter raise, an’ fetch him up till he’s mos’ grown. Then Major come over hy’ar an’ set up his home. My people wuh livin’ in the Potomac Hats then, same as fer goodness knows how long.

"Wasn’ no big mansion hy’ar till Major Custis build it. S’pose he wanted the bes’ house in Virginny, caise he was quality folks! Yes suh. My Gran’mammy remembered when he brought the young woman hy’ar what he married. She named Mary Lee Fitzhugh. They jus’ raise one daugh-

ter, an’ name her Mary Randolph Custis. My Mammy was a girl when this Young Missus Mary was growin’ up. No mo’ah white chillun at Arlington till Marse Robert an’ Missus Mary come back with their young folks."

It was indeed a high-born daughter of Maryland that

George Washington Parke Custis brought to the new man-

sion house at Arlington. A bit of historical background might well be added to Aunt Martha’s account right here. The young man who built Arlington House was the son of John Parke Custis, whose father was the late husband of Martha, buxom and wealthy widow whom General Washington had married. John had gone from the rolling hills of Virginia over into Maryland to woo and win his bride. She was Miss Elmore Calvert of Mount Airy. The happy couple of young landed aristocrats went to live at Abingdon, a vast Virginia estate purchased for John by General Washington.

It was at Abingdon their first child, Nellie Custis, was born. The Revolution then called John Custis away from his wife, his baby, his mansion, his vast estate of fertile fields and wooded hills, his numerous slaves. He was stricken with camp fever, and moved to the Maryland home of his wife’s sister. There he died, but a short while after his son, Parke Custis, was born, and but a few days after the glad news came of the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

General Washington took the two little tots to Mount Vernon. There Nellie and John spent their youth, in an atmosphere of beauty, dignity and culture that only Mount Vernon under the mastership of the beloved first President of the Nation could have enjoyed. George Washington added his own name to that of Parke Custis.

When his grandmother died, in 1802, and was laid to rest by the side of her honored husband on the banks of the Potomac, George Washington Parke Custis left Mount Vernon. He was twenty-one, strong, vigorous, schooled in polished manners and trained in handling an estate,--a true Virginia gentleman. It was this man who was master of Arlington when Uncle Jim and Aunt Martha were children and who left them as a part of the estate for his daughter Mary and her soldier husband.

Uncle Jim explains the building of such a fine mansion upon the picturesque heights overlooking the old Potomac by pointing out that Major Custis was the most important man in northern Virginia. He tells you that his Grandfather Parke, servant on the estate when it was owned by Washington, helped the Major to build the splendid home.

He relates:

"That was befo’ Young Major married. I heard ’em tell how he lived in it er while by himself, but they all knowed he didn’ build sech er big house jus’ fer himself! He’s, fixin’ to git married. Sho’ ’nough, he has er big party, an’ his partner’s a young gal with curls on her haid. Sort o’ showin’ off the mansion to her. ‘Twan’t long an’ they wuh married!

"Les’ see-I’se tellin’ you ’bout my people: Had another gran’father name’ George Clark. Full-blooded Indian.  That’s how come I got Indian in me. Was he a slave? No suh! Couldn’ hold that Indian in slavery. But he stayed round the place, bein’ Mammy’s father.

Major an’ Missus had jus’ one chile, Mary. Daddy an’ Mammy growed up same time she did. Come ’long, we’ll walk over the place, an’ I’ll show you how ’twas when I. was a growin’ boy.

From the front porch of the mansion we walk down the slope- a distance, back around the flower garden, to the greenhouse;  around to the old kitchen and what was once the back yard; then out among the silent, stately tombs  ‘beneath the massive trees.  Before the eyes of the old former slave there  passes again the panorama of  the happy gay life

of the Custises and Lees, before war came and tore Arlington _away from its master who sacrificed all for his beloved Virginia and the Southland.

"Down below the slope was whar We lived. Rows o’ cabins, an’ the loom-house, whar Mammy spin an’ weave, Each mawnin’ I got up an’ hurried out to the big spring I’d wait thar, lookin’ up the path to the big mansion. Hy’ar comes Massa Custis, walkin’ all dignified, with a cane, takin’ his mawnin’ stroll. He never missed a mawnin’. No suh! Get up, dress himself, an’ come down to the spring. I’d be waitin’.

" ‘Mawnin’, Massa Custis,’ I’d say.

‘Mawnin’, Jim!’ he answer. Then I’d give him his gourd o’ water, dipped up fresh from the cold spring. He’d drink, an’ smack his lips, same as he’s drinkin’ Wine. An’ mos’ frequent he’d give me a nickel, an’ sometimes a quarter. Major had heaps o’ money, an’ was a fine gen’1eman. Owned ’nough land to make him rich. Had this home place, an’ the two farms down on the Pawmunky. Bigges’ had three thousan’ acres, an’ t’other twenty-five hundred acres. Tuk heap o’ cullud people to wu’k ’em. Five hundred able-bodied men an’ women at the farms. Only ’bout a hundred of us hy’ar at Arlington, countin’ us chillun. My Mammy had seventeen of ’cml Pappy was the gard’ner fer Major Custis, an’ then fer Massa Lee. His garden right down not far from the river. My wu’k when I’se growin’ up was ter he’p in that garden.

Driving over from Washington to Arlington you pass within a stone’s throw of the gardens where Uncle Jim’s

father raised vegetables for the tables of Washington’s citizens. just beyond is the sloping stretch where the Custis Negroes of the home place were quartered. Here was the two-room cabin where the seventeen Parke children were born. The United States experimental gardens are located on the site of those old quarters. Not a trace of a cabin there now! Except that there rise from among the rows of waving corn phantom cabins, perhaps, when the moonlight dances on the Potomac and splashes over into the fields where the slave men tilled the loamy soil.

Boyhood Days

Jim, it seems, never had to exert himself greatly in the garden tasks. The Major did not want the boys and girls of his servant folk to begin work too young. His vast estates brought him all he needed. His Negroes of the home place, beyond raising the food, spinning and weaving cloth for domestic use in the mansion and for the needs of their own people of the quarters, and acting as cooks, maids, butlers, coachmen and handy men, were virtually free. Cruelty to servants had no place in the easy, bountiful existence of Major Custis’ household and farms.

According to Uncle Jim’s recollection, fifty acres were in cultivation to supply food for the mansion, for the quarters, and to provide a surplus which the servants sold. Jim would help his father load the garden truck into a boat. Down a canal the boat would be paddled, across the river, and nosed up another canal that ran right by the foot of the Monument, toward the old market on Pennsylvania Avenue. Canal Street in Washington follows fairly closely the line of that old waterway.

Hc’d unload his truck at the market an’ sell it, then row back ergain. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sat’idays wuh market days. Lawdy, who-all you reckon come buy Pappy’s' cawn an’ peas an’ sich like? All de fine folks, an’ senators’ wives. The market was mos’ important then, for not so many stores. Women folks come down, Walkin’, or in carriages, an’ buy what they want. They visit ’mongst each other at the market. Had heaps o’ time in those days, to be sociable! Yes suh.

Washington, Uncle Jim points out, was not so large a city then. About all one could see from Arlington were the tops of the trees in the town, except for the dome of the capitol and the roofs of a few buildings when the leaves had fallen in cool weather. Much of the present city of paved streets, stately buildings and beautiful homes was wooded tracts in those days of the late ’forties and the ’fifties. It was open country from the river to Pennsylvania Avenue, and---

"Lawdyl How many times I’se swam the Potomac an’ gone over to play on the commons! It was commons all the way after you cross the avenoo an’ got beyond I Street, whar it’s all city now. Us boys used ter go over right frequent. We’d swim from Custis Spring clear to the foot o’ the Monument. That’s a good swim, an’ we’d be puffin’ right smart. But heap o’ times I’se swam to Alexandria, six miles. Got good lungs from my Indian Gran’daddy.

"What we swim in? The skin Gawd gave us! Tie our

clo’es up in a bundle, an’ tie ’em on top our haids. When We git ’cross, set on the bank an’ put ’ern on. Nobody in' those days ter bother us!"

Growing-Up Time

The memories Aunt Martha holds of the days when she was growing up at Arlington center about the domestic tasks connected with caring for the large brood of children.

"You understan’, they wuh seventeen of us chillun! I was fo’ath. Amandy was oldes’. Thu’teen younger’n me. What wu’k I do? You can guess! Lawd o’ mercy--takin’ care all those chillun younger’n me! That’s my job.

"Mammy was the main weavin’ woman. She had chillun sofas’ she didn’ have time ter care fer ’em an’ do her wu’k, so ole granny-woman he’p me tend ’em, lak they did in the ole days. We’d wash an’ dress ’em, an’ put ’em on the flo’ah ter play. When they gits big ’nough they play in the yawd, an’ all round.

"How I recolleck Ole Missus, she had a fine face, an’ her hair in curls. She dress right han’some, with great wide skirts, with hoops in ’em. Tuk heap o’ cloth ter make a woman’s dressin’ in those days! They wore mo’ah clo’es, an’ they wore ’em nicer. You cain’t dress a woman beautiful nowadays, with all of ’em imitatin’ the gals and lookin’ ridiculous!

Mammy use ter tell me 'bout Young Missus Mary, how she dress with little flarin’ skirts, an’ short sleeves, an’ lace panties. They’d play together, rornpin’ round the mansion, all ’bout the gardens and down to the spring. She tole me ’bout the young folks that ’ud come to Missus Mary’s parties. Pretty girls ridin’ in big carriages, with coachmen in the seat an’ footmen in back; young men with tight breeches an’ lace collars! By an’ by Missus Mary got married, Mammy he’p wait on her. Gran’daddy was the cook, and I guess he fix’ up a big dinner. Leastwise he know how to do it, an’ he wouldn’ miss a chance lak that!

It was shortly after that her mother was married, Aunt Martha relates. She remembers that the Lee family came frequently to Arlington to visit the old folks when she was a young girl. When she was ten, there came to the quarters the sad news of the death of Ole Missus.

"Ole Major live on, lonesome lak, alone in the big mansion, with the servants to wait on him. We chillun ’ud see him walkin’ round, an’ We’d run up to him.

"‘Who’s yo’ Massa?’ he’d say, an’ grin.

’You is!’ We’d say. An’ it please him so we’d all git a nickel. Then we’d run over to Georgetown to buy sweets with it. Many a time I run ’cross that bridge with a passel o’ chillun from the quarters!

The Lees Come

It was on October 10, 1857, that Major Custis died, in his seventy-seventh year. George Parke, yard servant and handy man dug the grave so that Ole Massa could be by the side of Ole Missus Mary. Jim Parke solemnly helped his brother in the burial preparations. Lieutenant-Colonel Lee brought the sorrowing daughter of Arlington and their children to the last sad rites of her father. The Major was buried with military honors, and Uncle Jim recalls that there were officers with shiny swords and bearded soldiers with blue uniforms and muskets. They fired a salute over the grave.

Robert E. Lee and his wife became master and mistress of Arlington. Word passed freely among the colored people that the Major’s will would set them free. Uncle Jim and Aunt Martha insist that it was the Major’s intent that all his servants should be free at his death. They say that when they were all called up to the mansion house to hear instructions a lawyer-man standing by Colonel Lee on the portico read from a paper to the effect that they were all to be freed five years from that time. Five years from the day the Major’s will was probated, Abraham Lincoln was working on the draft of his emancipation proclamation.

Uncle Jim says that Colonel Lee let everything go as it had at Arlington, but that all was different at the mansion, with the lively young folk coming and going. Jim was made yard-boy, and Massa Lee showed him how to cut the grass and tend the shrubs. His grandfather, the cook, furnished him with ample rations.

Lawdy, how we lived! Arlington a mos’ beautiful place, an’ the Lees the lines’_ people in the worl’. Never a cross word ner scoldin’ the servants. All folks say Missus Mary jus’ lak a chile, so glad to get back home ergain! Cunnel Lee gone mos’ de time. When he’s hy’ar, he walks in the garden, rides a hoss, an’ sits on the big porch. Young folks have big parties right frequent.

Aunt Martha recalls slipping up to the mansion many an evening to station herself in vantage points ranging from the outside kitchen house to the back entrances to watch the charm and gaiety of those social events.

"Young folks come drivin’ in, an’ Missus Lee’s young folks would meet 'em on the porch an’ take ’em into the big parlor. All the girls with wide hoop skirts, an’ tight waists, an’ tiny dancin’ slippers. The men wearin’ tight trousers, black coats, an’ white ties’ wrapped _round their necks.

They’d have music an? dancin’-not the kind they do to-day, but pretty reels an’ schottisches. Hy’ar was the big parlor---"

And Aunt Martha starts on a tour of the rooms of the mansion that are still open to the public. She declares it was a lovely room, that parlor where the Colonel and Missus Mary were married, with its soft carpets, plush furniture, big fireplace and candles lighting up everything at night. She tells of the drawing-room with its chairs, books and pictures; of the office-room where Lee kept his papers and did his writing; of the spacious bedrooms. Over across the hall, Aunt Martha says, was the big children’s room, and in that room the colored children all came up to learn their lessons. Contrary to general practice in the South, Missus Mary was anxious that her servant children learn to read and write. Martha says that Young Missus Mary or Missus Annie did the teaching, While Missus Mildred and Young Massa Bob were off in school most of the time.

"Beyond that room was the dinin’-room. Big walnut

table, an’ heavy chairs, an’ pretty pictures on the walls. An’ the kitchen? In the ole days, quality folks never cook in the house! No suh! The big kitchen was out in