About four or five years ago their home which they owned was destroyed by fire, and having no insurance, they have since been living in a poor substitute for a house made of pieces of tin, wood, and old boxes, built under the branches of a tree.
Richard was in a hurry to go to town and see if their old age pension checks had come yet and invited us to come back some other time.
Drucilla said she was the slave of John Pointer. Her mother who was part Indian wore a ring in her nose and carried a tomahawk, had ten children, and mothered the ten children of her master’s wife. Drucilla does not remember much about her father, as he was the slave of another family.
Although Drucilla does not have any education, she can quote verse after verse from the Bible. She told some gruesome stories of how some of the masters treated their slaves. She said there never was a book printed that really told how some, or in fact the majority of the slaves were beaten and abused. To most masters they were not any more than stock. She said some of the young girls were beaten until they would die. Some of the little colored babies that were born out in the field or on the road were left to starve or be eaten up by the hogs.
Drucilla said some times their master would rent them out to other white men to work them if he didn’t have anything for them to do. Some masters would put their feed out in troughs for them just as they were feeding cattle. Some would give them cotton seed to eat. She said they would go home and cry and tell their master how they were treated and their master would tell them they wouldn’t have to go work for any one that did them like that.
In 1865 when the slaves were freed, Drucilla said she felt all out in the world as if she did not have a place to go and their master was afraid to let them stay with him even though they begged to stay, as it was then against the law. She was sent to St. Louis to do servant work, for a white family, that was very wealthy, and she stayed with them for twenty years. Drucilla has been married twice, and is the mother of ten children, but knows of only one daughter, or rather, she was the last one she has heard from out of the three that she thinks are still living, and that was fifty years ago.