Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/plantationremini00burw Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). The author's name on the cover and in the copyright notice seems to be a pseudonym. According to the catalog of the Library of Congress, the author was Letitia M. Burwell. PLANTATION REMINISCENCES by PAGE THACKER. 1878. Copyrighted in 1878 by Page Thacker. DEDICATION. Dedicated to my nieces, who will find in English and American publications such epithets applied to their ancestors as: "Cruel slave-owners;" "inhuman;" "Southern task masters;" "hard-hearted;" "dealers in human souls," &c. From these they will naturally recoil with horror. My own life would have been embittered had I believed myself descended from such; and that those who come after us may know the truth I wish to leave a record of plantation life as it was. The truth may thus be preserved among a few, and the praise they deserve awarded noble men and virtuous women who have passed away. PREFACE. For several years I have felt a desire to write these reminiscences, but did not conclude to do so until receiving, a few months ago, a letter from Mr. Martin F. Tupper--the English poet--in which he wrote: "Let me encourage you in the idea of writing 'Plantation Reminiscences.' It will be a good work; and it is time the world was learning the truth. I myself have learned it and shall not be slow in telling it to others." PLANTATION REMINISCENCES. CHAPTER I. That my birth place should have been a Virginia plantation; my lot in life cast on a Virginia plantation; my ancestors, for nine generations, owners of Virginia plantations, remain facts mysterious and inexplicable but to Him who determined the bounds of our habitations, and said: "Be still, and know that I am God." Confined exclusively to a Virginia plantation, during my earliest childhood, I believed the world one vast plantation bounded by negro quarters. Rows of white cabins with gardens attached; negro men in the fields; negro women sewing, knitting, spinning, weaving, house-keeping in the cabins, with negro children dancing, romping, singing, jumping, playing around the doors, formed the only pictures familiar to my childhood. The master's residence--as the negroes called it, the "great house"--occupied a central position, and was handsome and attractive; the overseer's being a plainer house, about a mile from this. Each cabin had as much pine furniture as the occupants desired; pine and oak being abundant, and carpenters always at work for the comfort of the plantation. Bread, meat, milk, vegetables, fruit and fuel were as plentiful as water in the springs near the cabin doors.