He
sold Aunt Serina to a man in Elberton, Georgia and all he had left then
was grandma. He couldn't sell her. She was too old and Aunt Kizziah and
Aunt Martha lived with her. Mother was born in Georgia. When a child was
sold it nearly grieved the mothers and brothers and sisters to death. It
was bad as deaths in the families. Jep Davis had forty or fifty niggers.
He had six boys. They all had to go to war. They was in the Confederate
army. Billy Davis was his daddy's young overseer. He had been raised up
with some of the nigger boys then come over them. They wouldn't mind his
orders. He tried to whoop them. They'd fight him back, choke him, throw
him on the ground. Then the old man would whoop them. We all wanted 'em
all to come home but Billy. Billy Davis got killed at war and never come
home. His sisters was afraid some of the nigger boys raised up with him
on the place would kill him and wanted Jep to make him stay at the
house. Jep Davis was a good master and he was bad enough.
"I seen mama whooped. They tied some of them to trees and some they just
whooped across their backs. It was 'cordin' to what they had done. Some
of them would run off to the woods and stay a week or a month.
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