- Born
- About 1845 (age 92 when interviewed)
- Interviewed in
- Alabama
- Age when photographed
- 92
Mary Rice
Mary Rice was 92 and living in Eufaula, Alabama, when she was interviewed. Unlike many, she freely said she had been a field hand. She was born on Dr. Cullen Battle's plantation near Tuskegee and was a teenager during the war. As a small girl she helped in the milk house, churning, washing pails and giving milk to the children, before going to the fields.
She spoke warmly of Cullen and Mary Jane Battle. Once, when she was very sick, her mistress had her brought into the big house to a room beside the kitchen so she could nurse her day and night, since the quarters were far off. She remembered the summer "jubilee" of several idle days after the crops were laid by. She said she was happier in those days than now, when there wasn't much left to be happy about "except I'm living, thank the Lord."
From the Federal Writers' Project slave narratives, 1936–1938. The interviewers wrote down their words in the 1930s, often in dialect spellings that reflect the interviewer more than the speaker.