William Ladd, Esq., Minot, Maine, President of the American Peace Society, formerly a slave-holder in Florida.—“The dwellings of the slaves were palmetto huts, built by themselves of stakes and poles, thatched with the palmetto-leaf. The door, when they had any, was generally of the same materials, sometimes boards found on the beach. They had _no floors_, no separate apartments; except the Guinea negroes had sometimes a small enclosure for their ‘god houses.’ These huts the slaves built themselves after task and on Sundays.”
Rev. Joseph M. Sadd, pastor Presbyterian Church, Castile, Greene Co., N. Y., who lived in Missouri five years previous to 1837.—“The slaves live _generally_ in _miserable huts_, which are _without floors_; and have a single apartment only, where both sexes are herded promiscuously together.”
Mr. George W. Westgate, member of the Congregational church in Quincy, Illinois, who has spent a number of years in slave states.—“On old plantations the negro quarters are of frame and clapboards, seldom affording a comfortable shelter from wind or rain; their size varies from eight by ten to ten by twelve feet, and six or eight feet high; sometimes there is a hole cut for a window, but I never saw a sash, or glass, in any. In the new country, and in the woods, the quarters are generally built of logs, of similar dimensions.”
Mr. Cornelius Johnson, a member of a Christian church in Farmington, Ohio. Mr. J. lived in Mississippi in 1837–8.—“Their houses were commonly built of logs; sometimes they were framed, often they had no floor; some of them have two apartments, commonly but one; each of those apartments contained a family. Sometimes these families consisted of a man and his wife and children, while in other instances persons of both sexes were thrown together, without any regard to family relationship.”
The _Western Medical Reformer_, in an article on the Cachexia Africana, by a Kentucky physician, thus speaks of the huts of the slaves: “They are _crowded_ together in a _small hut_, and sometimes having an imperfect and sometimes no floor, and seldom raised from the ground, ill ventilated, and surrounded with filth.”
Mr. William Leftwich, a native of Virginia, but has resided most of his life in Madison Co., Alabama.—“The dwellings of the slaves are log huts, from ten to twelve feet square, often without windows, doors or floors; they have neither chairs, table, or bedstead.”