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Oklahoma Slave Narrative
Mary Frances Webb Granddaughter of Sarah Vest
I've heard my grandmother tell a lot of her experiences during slavery. She
remembered things well as she was a grown woman at the time of the war of the
Rebellion. Her home was at Sedalia, Mo., and her owner was Baxter West, a prominent farmer and politician.
He was very kind and good to his slaves. He provided them with plenty of food
and good clothes. He would go to town and buy six or eight bolts of cloth at a
time and the women could pick out two dresses apiece off it. These would be
their dresses for dressing up. They wove the cloth for their everyday clothes.
The men wore jeans suits in winter. He bought shoes for all his slaves, young
and old. He had about twenty slaves counting the children. My grandmother was a
field hand. She plowed and hoed the crops in the summer and spring, and in the
winter she saved and cut cord wood just like a man. She said it didn't hurt her
as she was as strong as an ox.
She could spin and weave and sew. She helped make all the cloth for their
clothes and in the spring one of the jobs for the women was to weave hats for
the men. They used oat-strew, grass, and cane which had been split and dried
and soaked in hot water until it was pliant, and they wove it into hats. The
women wore a cloth tied around their head.
They didn't have many matches so they always kept a log heap burning to keep a
fire. It was a common thing for a neighbor to come in to borrow a coal of fire
as their fire had died out. On wash days all the neighbors would send several
of their women to the creek to do the family wash. They all had a regular
picnic of it as they would wash and spread the clothes on the bushes and low
branches of the tress to dry. They would get to spend the day together. They
had no tubs or wash boards. They had a large flat block of wood and a wooden
paddle. They'd spread the wet garment on the block, spread soap on it and
paddle the garment till it was clean. They would rinse the clothes in the
creek. Their soap was made from lye, dripped from ashes, and meat scraps. The
slaves had no lamps in their cabins. In winter they would pile wood on the fire
in their fireplace and have the light from the fire. The colored men went with
their master to the army. They made regular soldiers and endured the same
hardships that the white soldiers did. They told of one battle when so many men
were killed that a little stream seemed to be running pure blood as the water
was so bloody. After the war the slaves returned home with their masters and
some of the older ones stayed on with them and helped them to rebuild their
farms. None of them seemed to think it strange that they had been fighting on
the wrong side in the army as they were following their white folks. Those who
stayed with their old master were taught to read and write and were taught to
handle their own business and to help themselves in every way possible to take
their place in life.
Granddaughter of Sarah Vest, aged 92, (deceased) McAlester, Okla
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