The following data is extracted from Florida Slave Narratives.
Rivana-Williams Boynton was born on John and Mollie Hoover's
plantation near Ulmers, S.C. being 15 years of age when the
'mancipation came. "Our Boss man, he had planty of salves. We
lived in a log houses. My father was an Indian and he ran away
to war, but I don't 'member anything of my mother. She was sold
and taken away 'fore I ever knew of her. I 'member that I had to
thin cotton in the fields and mind the flies in the house. I had
a leafy branch that was cut from a tree. I'd stand and wave that
branch over the table to keep the flies out of the food. I'd
work like that in the day time and at night I'd sleep in my
uncle's shed. We had ling bunks along the side of the walls. We
had no beds, just gunny sacks nailed to the bunks, no slats, no
springs, nothing else. You know how these her sortin' trays are
made, - these her trays they use to sort oranges and 'matoes.
Well, we had to sleep on gunn sack beds. They had weavin' looms
where they made r