' 'Nother house
I live in (this was in North Carolina too), it had been a gamblin'
house and it had hants. On rainy nights, I'd lie awake and hear "drip,
drip ... drip, drip...." What was that? Why, that was the blood a
dripping ... Why on rainy night? Why, on rainy nights, the blood gets
a little fresh...!"
Maryland
Sept. 4, 1937
Rogers
PERRY LEWIS, Ex-slave.
Reference: Personal interview with Perry Lewis, ex-slave,
at his home, 1124 E. Lexington St., Baltimore.
"I was born on Kent Island, Md. about 86 years ago. My father's name was
Henry and mother's Louise. I had one brother John, who was killed in the
Civil War at the Deep Bottom, one sister as I can remember. My father
was a freeman and my mother a slave, owned by Thomas Tolson, who owned a
small farm on which I was born in a log cabin, with two rooms, one up
and one down.
"As you know the mother was the owner of the children that she brought
into the world. Mother being a slave made me a slave. She cooked and
worked on the farm, ate whatever was in the farmhouse and did her share
of work to keep and maintain the Tolsons. They being poor, not having a
large place or a number of slaves to increase their wealth, made them
little above the free colored people and with no knowledge, they could
not teach me or any one else to read.
"You know the Eastern Shore of Maryland was in the most productive slave
territory and where farming was done on a large scale; and in that part
of Maryland where there were many poor people and many of whom were
employed as overseers, you naturally heard of patrollers and we had them
and many of them.
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