"They always blowed a horn for you to go to work by and get off for dinner by and stop work in the evening by. When that horn blowed, you couldn't get them mules to plow another foot. They just wouldn't do it. Us always et dinner out in the yard, in the summer time, at a long bench. In cold weather us always went inside to eat. Whenever us didn't have enough to eat us would tell the overseer and he seed to it that us got plenty. Our overseers was colored."
Another old woman said she "started working at the age of seven as a nurse. I nursed, made fire in the house and around the wash pots 'til I was old enough to go to work in the fields. When I got big enough I hoed and later plowed. Us didn't wait 'til sun up to start workin', us started as soon as it was light enough. When it come to field work, you couldn't tell the women from the men. Of course my marster had two old women on the place and he never made them work hard, and he never did whip' em. They always took care of the cookin' and the little chillun.
"I'll tell you one thing, they had better doctors then than they do now. When folks had high blood pressure the doctors would cut you in your head or your arm and folks would get over it then. They took better care of themselves. Whenever anybody was caught in the rain they had to go to the marster's house and take some medicine. They had somethin' that looks like black draught looks now, and they would put it in a gallon jug, fill it a little over half full of boiling water, and finish fillin' it with whiskey. It was real bitter, but it was good for colds. Young folk didn't die then like they do now. Whenever anybody died it was a old person.
"I know more about conjuration than I'll ever be able to tell. I didn't believe in it at one time, but I've seen so much of it that I can almost look at a sick person and tell whether he is conjured or not. I wouldn't believe it now if I hadn't looked at snakes come out of my own sister's daughter. She married a man that had been goin' 'round with a old woman who wasn't nothin'. Well one day this woman and my niece got in a fight 'bout him, and my niece whipped her. She was already mad with my niece 'bout him, and after she found she couldn't whip her she decided to get her some way and she just conjured her.