Queen’s Bush
Mrs. John Little
I was born in Petersburg, Va. When very young, I was taken to Montgomery county. My old master died there, and I remember that all the people were sold. My father and mother were sold together about one mile from me. After a year, they were sold a great distance, and I saw them no more. My mother came to me before she went away, and said, “Good by, be a good girl; I never expect to see you any more.”
Then I belonged to Mr. T—N—, the son of my old master. He was pretty good, but his wife, my mistress, beat me like sixty. Here are three scars on my right hand and arm, and one on my forehead, all from wounds inflicted with a broken china plate. My cousin, a man, broke the plate in two pieces, and she said, “Let me see that plate.” One piece cut into the sinew of the thumb, and made a great knot permanently. The wound had to be sewed up. This long scar over my right eye, was from a blow with a stick of wood. One day she knocked me lifeless with a pair of tongs,—when I came to, she was holding me up, through fright. Some of the neighbors said to her, “Why do n’t you learn Eliza to sew?” She answered, “I only want to learn her to do my housework, that’s all.” I can tell figures when I see them, but cannot read or write.
I belonged to them until I got married at the age of sixteen, to Mr. John Little, of Jackson. My master sold me for debt,—he was a man that would drink, and he had to sell me. I was sold to F—T—, a planter and slave-trader, who soon after, at my persuasion, bought Mr. Little.
I was employed in hoeing cotton, a new employment: my hands were badly blistered. “Oh, you must be a great lady,” said the overseer, “can’t handle the hoe without blistering your hands!” I told him I could not help it. My hands got hard, but I could not stand the sun. The hot sun made me so sick I could not work, and, John says if I had not come away, they would surely have sold me again. There was one weakly woman named Susan, who could not stand the work, and she was sold to Mississippi, away from her husband and son. That’s one way of taking care of the sick and weak. That’s the way the planters do with a weakly, sickly “nigger,”—they say “he’s a dead expense to ’em,” and put him off as soon as they can. After Susan was carried off, her husband went to see her: when he came back he received two hundred blows with the paddle.
I staid with T—more than a year. A little before I came away, I heard that master was going to give my husband three hundred blows with the paddle. He came home one night with an axe on his shoulder, tired with chopping timber. I had his clothes all packed up, for I knew he would have to go. He came hungry, calculating on his supper,—I told him what was going. I never heard him curse before—he cursed then. Said he, “If any man, white or black, lays his hand on me to-night, I’ll put this axe clear through him—clear through him:” and he would have done it, and I would not have tried to hinder him. But there was a