Good Li’L Boys and Girls from the Buckeye State of Ohio (Free State) and the Hoosier State of Indiana (Free State) Black Children Speak Series!

GOOD LI’L BOYS AND GIRLS

FROM

the

Buckeye State

Of

OHIO

(free state)

And the

Hoosier State

Of

Indiana

(free state)

Black Children Speak Series!

Sharon Kaye Hunt, RD

Copyright © 2016 by Sharon Kaye Hunt, RD.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-5245-5729-4

      eBook         978-1-5245-5728-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

KJV

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The HYPERLINK "http://www.zondervan.com/" Zondervan Corporation.

Rev. date: 11/09/2016

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

About Ohio

Ohio Slave Narratives And Old Testament -PSALMS

1.   After Slavery

2.   Any Churches?

3.   Auction Block

4.   Auctioned Off

5.   Baby Slave

6.   Before Daylight

7.   Before the Yankees

8.   Big Auction Day

9.   Big Spiders for Cooking

10.   Bloodhounds

11.   Born in Kentucky

12.   Born in West Virginia

13.   Bought and Sold

14.   Boys Learning to Work

15.   Brother in the Confederate Army

16.   Building Railroads

17.   Cabins

18.   Catfish –Kentucky –Style

19.   Celebration of Fourth of July

20.   Child’s Medicine

21.   Child’s Play

22.   Children’s Play on the Plantation

23.   Chosen Land

24.   Church

25.   Church on the Plantation

26.   Christmas Day Treats

27.   Cobbler

28.   Colored Preacher

29.   Cooking in Louisville

30.   Corn Bread Common

31.   Craziers Everyday

32.   Daylight to Dark

33.   Debt for us all

34.   Doctor’s Orders

35.   Dragged Home After Running Away

36.   Driver on the Plantation

37.   Escaped to the North

38.   Fiddling

39.   Freedom

40.   Good Eating

41.   Great Black Men

42.   Grown Life

43.   Historians

44.   Hog Killing Time and Cookies

45.   Jails

46.   Jesus Christ –A Misisionary

47.   Killing on the Plantation

48.   Ku Klux Definition

49.   Klu Klux Klan in Ohio

50.   Learning How to Read

51.   Maid to the Mistress

52.   Marse Hunt

52.   Master Shot

54.   Mother Sold

55.   Mulatto Mother

56.   Negro District

57.   Night Riders

58.   No Man is Master but God

59.   Northern Soldiers

60.   One Girl’s Account of the Plantation

61.   Overseer

62.   Overseer’s Woe

63.   Quality White Folks

64.   Run-a Way Slaves

65.   Run North

66.   Slave Sales

67.   Slave Talk

68.   Sold at Three Years Old

69.   Starked Naked

70.   The Plantation after the Civil War

71.   The War

72.   Underground Railroad

73.   Underground Railway

74.   Voted Twice

75.   Voting

76.   Wages

77.   Whipping Posts

78.   White’s People’s Feet

79.   Whiteman Father

80.   Yankee Soldiers

About Indiana

Indiana Slave Narratives Volume Number 5

1.   A Tradition from Pre-Civil War Days

2.   Alpha House

3.   American Indians made Slaves Among the Negroes

4.   After Slavery

5.   Back Door of the Big House

6.   Bank on the Road

7.   Chattel

8.   Children’s Duties

9.   Coal Miners

10.   Clark Gable Type

11.   Bloodhounds

12.   Bombay Mother

13.   Buck Slaves

14.   Child Pet in a Slave

15.   Confederate Generals

16.   Doctor

17.   Dog’s Food

18.   Eyes Out

19.   Evansville

20.   Escape from Child Rape

21.   Estate Sale

22.   Father’s Movement

23.   Father’s Name

24.   Full Blooded African Negro

25.   Gift Slaves

26.   Ginseng Seller for Blue Back Speller

27.   Go Away

28.   Good Butter

29.   Grandson of the Master

30.   Half-Sister to the White Children

31.   Handicuffed to Chains

32.   Hickory Quakers

33.   Indian Pools

34.   Kin Folks

35.   Ku Klux Klan

36.   Little Free Negro

37.   Marriage Gift

38.   Master of the Gospel

39.   Master’s Beating

40.   Moved from Tennessee

41.   Mother Captured by the Indians

42.   Nigger Trader

43.   No Association

44.   Ordered Out

45.   Overseers

46.   Paddy Roller

47.   Plough Hand

48.   Pole Cat vs Goose

49.   Poor White Folks

50.   Revivials

51.   Roust a –Bouts

52.   Run Away

53.   Sister Sold $1200

54.   Sold

55.   Runaway to Indiana

56.   Steam Boatman

57.   Tobacco Planting

58.   Union Army

59.   White Woman’s Raft

60.   Witness to Hanging

Extra: 128 Black Inventors And Their Inventions

References

Dedication

All of my work and life is dedicated to Jesus Christ, head of my life.

The body of work is dedicated to my ancestor, my parents and brothers.

Dedicated to the readers-For all people!

Acknowledgments

The book-GOOD LI’L BOYS AND GIRLS from the Buckeye State of Ohio and the Hoosier State of Indiana is a part of the twelve(12) Black Children Speak Series. The Series are made up from interviews taken from ex-slaves by Works Project Administration (WPA) for the District of Columbia Sponsored by the Library of Congress. The title of the project SLAVE NARRATIVES –A Folk History in the United States Interviews with Former Slaves.

The ‘Black Children Speak Series’ show the answers about childhood from ex-slaves-Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938.

Ex-Slaves were interviewed from seventeen states.

The author is indebted to the WPA writers taking the interviews, the ex-slaves and the Library of Congress.

As an extra, more than one hundred Black Inventors and their inventions are included in each of the Series. The inventions are from the Black Invention Museum. Some of the inventors were slaves.

DISCLAIMER: The words of the ex-slaves have not been edited. Ex-slaves spoke in the language they knew. Some words may be offensive in the ex-slaves’ description of the activities of their childhood.

All recipes were developed by the author. The recipes are only suggestions.

Introduction

Each of the Black Children Speak Series will be comprised of the answers given on topics of what the slave children experienced on plantations more than 150 years ago.

There were twenty questions asked by the interviewers of the Federal Writers’ Project sponsored by the Works Progress administration. For each of the Series, the author has selected informative information that gives perspective on slave children’s impact on the United States then and now.

Each Series has the following:

1. The author has selected highlights from summaries of questions asked to ex-slaves about their childhood from seventeen states. These highlights have been developed into 12 books called the Black Children Speak Series. The highlights are in the slave children’s own words as written by the WPA writers.

Sample of Instructions to WPA writers and twenty questions:

STORIES FROM EX-SLAVES

The main purpose of these detailed and homely questions is to get the Negro interested in talking about the days of slavery. If he will talk freely, he should be encouraged to say what he pleases without references to the questions. It should be remembered that the Federal Writers’ Project is not interested in taking sides on any questions. The worker should not censor any material collected, regardless of its nature.

It will not be necessary, indeed it will probably be a mistake, to ask every person all of the questions. Any incidents or facts he can recall should be written down as nearly as possible just as he says them, but do not use dialect spelling or complicated that it may confuse the reader.

A second visit, a few days after the first one, is important so that the worker may gather

All the worthwhile recollections that the first talk has aroused.

Questions:

1. When and where were you born?

2. Give the names of your father and mother. Where did they come from? Give names of your brothers and sisters. Tell about your life with them and describe your home and the quarters. Describe the beds and where you slept. Do you remember anything about your grandparents or any stories told you about them?

3. What work did you do in slavery days? Did you ever earn any money? What did you buy with this money?

4. What did you eat and how was it cooked? Ant possums?

Rabbits? Fish? What food did you like best?

Did the slaves have their own gardens?

5. What clothing did you wear in hot weather? Cold weather? On Sundays? Any shoes? Describe your Sundays?

6. Tell about your master, mistress, their children, the house they lived in, the overseer or driver, poor white neighbors.

7. How many acres in the plantation? How many slaves on it? How and at what time did the overseer wake up the slaves? Did they work hard and late at night? How and for what cause were the slaves punished? Tell what you saw. Tell some of the stories you heard.

8. Was there a jail for slaves? Did you ever see any slaves sold or auctioned off? How did groups of slaves travel? Did you ever see any slaves in chains?

9. Did the white folks help you to learn how to read and write?

10. Did the slaves have a church on your plantation? Did they read the Bible? Who was your favorite preacher? Your favorite Spirituals? Tell about the baptizing, baptizing songs. Funerals and funeral songs.

11. Did the slaves ever run away to the North? Why? What did you hear about patrollers? How did slaves carry news from one plantation to another? Did you hear of troubles between the blacks and the whites.

12. What did the slaves do when they went to their quarters after the day’s work was done on the plantation? Did they work on Saturday afternoon? What did they do Saturday nights? Sundays? Christmas morning? New Year’s Day?

Any other holiday? Corn shucking? Cotton Picking? Dances? When some of the white master’s family married or died? A wedding or death among the slaves?

13. What games did you play as a child? Can you give the words or sing any of the play song or ring games of the children?

Riddles? Charms? Stories about animals? What do you think of the plantation hollers? Can you tell a funny story you have heard or something funny that happened to you? Tell about the ghosts you have seen.

14. When slaves became sick who looked after them? What medicine(herbs, leaves, or roots) did the slaves use for sickness? What charms did they wear and to keep off what disease?

15. What do you remember about the war that brought you freedom? What happened on the day news came that you were free? What did your master say and do?

16. Tell what work you did and how you lived the first on did and how you lived the first year after the war and what you saw or heard about the Ku Klux Klan and the nightriders. Any school then for Negroes?

17. Now that slavery is ended what do you think of it? Tell why you joined and why you think all people should religious.

18. What do you think of Abraham Lincoln? Booker Washington? Any other prominent white man or you have heard of?

19. When did you marry? Describe the wedding. How many children and grandchildren have you and what are they doing?

20. Was the overseer poor white trash What were some of the rules?

II. Bye Lines-short lines from Negro Spirituals or popular sayings added at the top of the sayings.

III. Scriptures –at the bottom of each sayings. Each sayings has an old or new testament scripture(s).

IV. Foods for Thought- The author has developed five recipes that can become popular in the states.

V. Extra-List of inventions by African-Americans

OHIO NARRATIVES, VOLUME XII—(Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938)

About Ohio

Ohio Slave Narratives And Old Testament -PSALMS

1. After Slavery

-Where shall I go?

I stayed with Michael and Mary Blue till I was nineteen. They were supposed to give me a saddle and bridle, clothes and a hundred dollars. The massa made me mad one day. I was rendering hog fat. When the crackling would fizzle, he hollow and say ‘ don’t put do much fire.’ He came out again and said, ‘ I told you not put too much fire’ and he threatened to ggive me a thrashing. I said, ‘If you do I will throw rocks at you.

After that I decided to leave and I told Anna Blue I was going. She say, Don’t do it, you are too young to go into the world.’ I say, I don’t care, and I took a couple of sacks and put in a few things and walked to my uncle. He was a farmer at New Creek He told me he would get me a job at his brother’s farm until they were ready to use me in the tannary. He gave me eight dollars a month until the tanner got ready to use me. Then I came to Steubenville. I got work and stayed in Steubenville 18 months. Then I went back and returned to Steubenville in 1884."

Ex-Slave John Williams Matheus, 77 years old

Old Testament

PSALM 90:1

Lord, thou has been a dwelling place in all generations

2. Any Churches?

-Swing low, Sweet Chariot!

I went through the gate. I asked if this was the house where Mary Meriwether lived. Her mistress said, ‘Yes, she’s in the back. Are you the girl Mr. Meriwether’s looking for? My heart was in my mouth. It just seemed I couldn’t go through the gate. I never even saw my sister that time. I hid for a while and then went back.

"We didn’t have any churches. My master would come down Sunday morning with just enough flour to make bread. Coffee, too. Their coffee was parts of meal, corn and so, on. Work all week and that’s what they had for coffee.

"We used to sing, ‘Swing, low, sweet chariot’. When our folks sang that, we could really see the chariots.

"Once, Jim Ferguson, a colored man, came to teach school. The white folks beat and whipped him and drove him away in his underwear.

"I wanted so hard to learn to read, but I didn’t even know I was free, even when slavery was ended.

"I been so exhausted working, I was like an inch-worm crawling along a roof. I worked till I thought another