DAVID WILBORN                                 1.   

                        Ex-slave, age 81

     "I was bawn in Athens, Gawgia, Jan.13, 1856. My father, Robert Wilborn

was a Cherokee Indian. My mother was the daughter of a Negro woman and a

German doctor. There were fifteen child'un of us, twelve boys and three

girls. Dr. Edward Ware owned mother and we child'un, and father worked for

him, making coffins for use when any of the slaves on his plantation died,

and for Dr. Ware to sell, too."

     "Dr. Ware owned a large numbuh of slaves - I jes' dont know how many,

but I heard mother say they was something like a hundred. He was the doctor

that examined the slaves for the auction, and he was a slave trader.

     "Father died in 1863. I remembuh he was buried in one of the coffins

he made himself. It was put on a wagon pulled by a mule. A man led the mule

and our family walked down the road behind the wagon to the cemetery."
     "Of co'se we lived in a cabin. That was the way all slaves lived. We

ate cawn bread and fat meat, and hardly any vegetables, and syrup. We went

barefoot, and wore loose shirts with a hole, cut for the haid to go through,

and a hole for each arm. Many a day I picked cotton from sunrise to dark
when I was jes' a little fellow."

     "I remembuh our old Missus having a big hole or underground tunnel

dug so they could hide their hosses. The tunnel was lined with boards, and

the hosses put down in it, and then they covered up the hole. But the Union

soldiers was used to that way of hiding cattle and hosses, so of co'se they
found em."




			

Works Progress Administration (WPA) Ex-Slave Narratives

David Wilborn, Ex-Slave Narrative