From: Ex-Slave narratives, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
[Notations added for clarity] by Viki Anderson

Interview: Polly Colbert

My mother died when I was real small, and about a year after that my father died. Master Holmes [Colbert] told us children not to cry, that he and Miss Betsy would take good care of us. The did, too. They took us in their house with them and looked after us just as good as they could colored children. We slept in a little room clost to them and she always seen that we was covered up good before she went to bed. I guess she got a sight of satisfaction from taking care of us cause she didn't have no babies to care for.

Master Holmes and Miss Betsy was real young folks but the was pretty well fixed. He owned about 100 acres of land that was cleared and ready for the plow and a lot that was not in cultivation. He had the woods full of hogs and cows and he owned seven or eight grown slaves and several children. I remember Uncle Shed, Uncle Lige, Aunt Chaney, Aunt Lizzie and Aunt Suzy just as well as if it was yesterday. Master Holmes and Miss Betsy was both half-breed Choctaw Indians [actually Chickasaw]. They had both been away to school somewhere in the states and were well-educated. They had two children but the died when they was little. Another little girl was born to them after the War and she lived to be a grown woman.

They sure was fine young folks and provided well for us. He always had a smokehouse full of meat, lard, sausage, dried beans, peas, corn, potatoes, turnips and collards banked up for winter. He had pleanty of milk and butter for all of us, too.

Master Holmes always say, "a hungry man can't work." And he always saw to it that we had lots to eat.

We cooked all sorts of Indian dishes! Tom-fuller, pashofa, hickory-nut grot, Tom-budha, ash-cakes, and pound cakes besides vegetable and meat dishes. Corn or corn meal ws used in all the Indian dishes. We made hominy out of the whold grains. Tom-fuller was made from beaten corn and tasted sort of like hominy.

We would take corn and beat in like in a wooden mortar with a wooden pestle. We would husk it by fanning it and we would then put it on to cook in a big pot. While it was cooking we'd pick out a lot of hickory nuts, tie them up in cloth and beat them a little and drop them in and cook for a long time. We called the dish hiclory -nut grot. When we made pashofa we beat the corn and cook for a little while and then we add fresh pork and cook until the meat was done. Tom-budha was green corn and fresh meat cooked together and seasoned with tongue or pepper-grass.

We cooked on teh fire place with the pots hanging over the fire on racks and then we baked bread and cakes in a oven-skillet. We didn't use soda and baking powder. We'd put salt in the meal and scald it with boiling water and make it int pones and bake it. We'd roll the ashcakes in wet cabbage leaves and put them in the hot ashes and bake them. We cooked potatoes, and roasting ears that way also. We sweetened our cakes with molasses, and they were plenty sweet, too.

There was lots of possums and coons and squirrels and we nearly always had some one of these to eat. We'd parboil the possum or coon and put it in a pan and hake him with potatoes around him. We used the broth to baste him and for gravy. It sure was fine eating them days.

I never had much work to do. I helped around the house when I wanted to and I run errands for Miss Betsy. I liked to do things for her. When I got a little bigger my brother and I toted cool water to the field for the hands.

Didn't none of Master Holmes' Negroes work when they was sick. He always saw that we had medicine and a doctor if they needed one. About the only sickness we had was chills and fever. In the old days we made lots of our own medicine and I still do it yet. We used polecat grease for croup and rheumatism. Dog-fennel, butterfly-root, and life-everlasting boiled and mixed and made into a syrup will cure pneumonia and pleurisy. Pursey-weed, called squirrel physic, boiled into a syrup will cure chills and fever. Snake-root steeped for a lont time and mixed with whiskey will cure chills and fever also.

Our clothes was all made of homespun. The women done all the spinning and the weaving but Miss Betsy cut our all the clothes and helped with the sewing. She learned to sew when she was away to school and she learnt all her women to sew. Whe done all the sewing for the children. Master Holmes bought our shoes and we all had them to wear in the winter. We all went barefoot in the summer...

Old Uncle Caleb Colbert, Uncle Billy Gogan, and Reverand John Carr, Reverend Baker, Reverend Hogue, and old Father Murrow preached for the white folks all the time and us colored folks when to church with them. They had church under brush arbors and we sat off to ourselves but we could take part in the singing ans sometime a colored person would get happy and pray and shout but nobody didn't think nothing about that.

The patrollers was the law, kind of like the policemen now. They sure never did whip one of Master Holmes' Negroes for he didn't allow anybody else to either. I was afraid of the Ku Kluxers too, and I 'spects that Master Holmes was one of the leaders if the truth was known. They was sure scary looking... [end]