Hagar Brown, former slave at The Oaks plantation, Georgetown County, South Carolina (13.5)(Photograph by Bayard Wootten, ca. 1938)


Down in the quarters every black family had a one- or two-room log cabin. We didn't have no floors in them cabins. Nice dirt floors was the style then, and we used sage brooms. We kept our dirt floors swept . . . clean and white.-- Millie Evans, former slave from North Carolina

In the cabins it was nice and warm. They was built of pine boarding . . . . The beds was made of puncheons [rough poles] fitted in holes bored in the walls, and planks laid across them poles. We had ticking mattresses filled with corn shucks. Sometimes the men build chairs at night. We didn't know much about having nothing, though. -- Mary Reynolds, former slave from Catahoula Parish, Louisiana


My father was a carpenter and old massa let him have lumber and he made he own furniture out of dressed lumber and make a box to put clothes in. And he used to make spinning wheels and parts of looms. He was a very valuable man.-- Carey Davenport, former slave from Walker County, Texas