Carrie Davis

Carrie Davis was interviewed while doing laundry at her home near Smith's Station, Alabama. She was born in Harris County, Georgia, and was about ten or twelve when freedom came. Her parents were Martha and Nathan Perry, and her siblings were Amy, Ida, Knoxie, Jim, Abraham and Franklin. They lived in the Perry quarters, in split-log cabins daubed with mud, about a hundred yards from the house of Billy and Nancy Perry.

She was trained as a house girl and helped keep the yards and bring in water. She called her own enslaver fairly good but said the man on the neighboring plantation was cruel. He had regular whipping days and used straps with holes in them that raised blisters; the blisters were then cut with a handsaw and washed in salt water. When people from that plantation came for water, her mistress put salve on their backs so they could get their shirts off. An overseer woke everyone with a trumpet.

"There was a lot of cruel things done in slavery times," she said. "Them was good and bad times."