On one plantation where the mother was the cook for the owner, her children were fed from the big kitchen.
A piece of iron crossed the fireplace, and the pots hung down on hooks. "Us cooked corn dodgers," one ex-slave recalled, "the hearth would be swept clean, the ash cakes wrapped up into corn shucks and cooked brown. They sure was good!"
The large plantations were really industrial centers in which almost everything necessary to the life of the white family and the large retinue of slaves was grown or manufactured. On estates where there were many slaves there were always trained blacksmiths, coopers, carpenters, tanners, shoemakers, seamstresses, laundresses, weavers, spinners, cooks and house servants; all employed in the interest of the community life of the plantation. Those who could not learn to do any of this skilled work were turned into the fields and called, "hands". Both men and women were employed in the fields where cotton, corn, rice and tobacco were cultivated. House servants ware always considered superior to field hands.
Melinda Mitchell, who was born a slave in Edgefield, S.C., said, "My family wasn't fiel' hands. We wus all house servants. My father wus de butler, and he weighed out de rations fer de slaves. My mammy wus de house 'oman and her mother and sister wus de cooks. Marster wouldn't sell none of his slaves, and when he wanted to buy one he'd buy de whole fambly to keep fum havin' 'em separated."
At an early age Melinda and her younger sister were given to the two young ladies of the house as their personal maids. "I wus given to Miss Nettie," Melinda said, "Our young Mistresses visited, too, and wherever dey went my sister and me went erlong. My own mammy took long trips with ole Mistis to de Blue Ridge Mountains and sometimes over de big water."
Susannah Wyman of the Starling Freeman plantation in South Carolina said, "The house servants wuz trained to cook, clean up, de man wuz trained to make shoes. I don't think us had carpenters. I toted water in de field, hoed some. I wuz quite young. I spun but I didn't weave. Dere wuz a lady dey had on de place did de weavin'. I had many a striped dress woven on dat big loom and dey wuz pretty, too."