The matter of allotment was confusing to the interviewer and Aunt Sally endeavored to explain.
"Yes’m. Allotted? Yes’m. I’m goin’ to explain that," she replied. "You see there was slave traders in those days, jes’ like you got horse and mule an’ auto traders now. They bought and sold slaves and hired ’em out. Yes’m, rented ’em out. Allotted means somethin’ like hired out. But the slave never got no wages. That all went to the master. The man they was allotted to paid the master."
"I never was sold. My mama was sold only once, but she was hired out many times. Yes’m when a slave was allotted, somebody made a down payment and gave a mortgage for the rest. A chattel mortgage."
"Times don’t change, just the merchandise.
"Allotments made a lot of grief for the slaves", Aunt Sally asserted. "We left my papa in Kentucky, ’cause he was allotted to another man. My papa never knew where my mama went, an’ my mama never knew where papa went." Aunt Sally paused a moment, then went on bitterly. "They never wanted mama to know, ’cause they knowed she would never marry so long she knew where he was. Our master wanted her to marry again and raise more children to be slaves. They never wanted mama to know where papa was, an’ she never did", sighed Aunt Sally.
Only those who have lost their mate, and never know the end of the tale, can understand such heart anguish.
"Mama said she would never marry again to have children," continued Aunt Sally, "so she married my step-father, Trattle Barber, ’cause he was sick an’ could never be a father. He was so sick he couldn’t work, so me and mama had to work hard. We lived in a kitchen, a room in a log house joined on to the master’s house. My mama worked in the field, even when I was a little baby. She would lay me down on a pallet near the fence while she plowed the corn or worked in the field.
"Stepfather and mama often tended their own tobacco and grain in the moonlight. This they could sell and have the money. We could go to church which was held in the school house. Sometimes they let us play with the other children after the noon dishes were washed and there wasn’t anything else to do.
"There was most always something to do. Master never allowed nobody to be idle. Mama worked in the house and the fields too. At night after she come home from the field, she had to grate corn for the family next day. We didn’t have many grist mills them days, an’ we would punch holes in a piece of tin, and rub the ear of corn across it and make meal for our use.