Edited by:
Miss Maude Barragan
Residency 13
Augusta, Georgia


"It never was the same on our plantation atter we done laid Mistess
away," said James Bolton, 85 year old mulatto ex-slave. "I ain't never
forget when Mistess died--she had been so good to every nigger on our
plantation. When we got sick, Mistess allus had us tended to. The
niggers on our plantation all walked to church to hear her funeral
sermon and then walked to the graveyard to the buryin'."

James, shrivelled and wrinkled, with his bright eyes taking in
everything on one of his rare visits to town, seemed glad of the chance
to talk about slavery days. He spoke of his owner as "my employer" and
hastily corrected himself by saying, "I means, my marster."

"My employer, I means my marster, and my mistess, they was sho' all
right white folkses," he continued. "They lived in the big 'ouse. Hit
was all painted brown. I heard tell they was more'n 900 acres in our
plantation and lots of folkses lived on it. The biggest portion was
woods. My paw, he was name Whitfield Bolton and Liza Bolton was my maw.
Charlie, Edmund, Thomas and John Bolton was my brothers and I had one
sister, she was Rosa. We belonged to Marse Whitfield Bolton and we lived
on his plantation in Oglethorpe County near Lexington, not far from the
Wilkes County line.

"We stayed in a one room log cabin with a dirt floor. A frame made