George Selman

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We was a big fam'ly, nine children. I was born a slave of the Selmans, Marster Tom and Missus Polly, and they lived in Mississippi. Mother's name was Martha and my father's name was John Green Selman.

Marster's folks come from Mississippi a long ways back and they had a big house made from hewed logs with a big hallway down the middle. The kitchen was out in the yard, 'bout forty steps from the house. The yard had five acres in it and a big garden was in it. Marster had five slave families and our cabins was built in a half circle in the back yard. I seemed to be the pet and always went with Marster Tom to town or wherever he was goin'. Then I learned to plow by my mother letting me hold the handles and walk along with her. Finally she let me go 'round by myself.

Marster Tom was always good to us and he taught me religion. He was the best man I ever knew. Then Saturday noon come, they blew the horn and we quit workin'. We went to church one Sunday a month and we sat on one side and the white folks on the other.

I never learnt to read and write, but I learned to work in the house and the fields. Late in the day Aunt Dicey, who was the cook, called all us children out under the big trees and give us supper. This was in summer, but nobody ever fed us but Aunt Dicey. We all ate from one bowl, or maybe I'd call it a tray 'cause it was made of wood, like a bread tray but bigger, big enough to hold three, four gallons. She put the food in the tray and give each chil' a spoon. Mostly we had pot likker and corn-bread. In winter we ate from the same tray, but in the kitchen.

I never seen runaway slaves, but Marster Tom had a neighbor mean to slaves and sometimes when they was whipped we could hear 'em holler. The neighbor had one slave called Sallie, and she was a weaver and was so mean she had to wear a chain. After she died, I heered her ghost one night. I was stayin' with a white man who had the malaria-typhoid-pneumonia fever, and one night I heered Sallie scream and seen her chain drag back and forth. I tol' the man I knowed it was Sallie, 'cause I'd heered that scream for years. But the man said she was dead, so it mus' have been her ghost. I heered her night after night, screamin' and draggin' her chain up and down.

When Marster Tom says we's free, I goes to his sister, Miss Ca'line and works for her. After sev'ral years I larned to preach and I's the author of most the Baptist churches in this county.