Life for me was very difficult in those times. The lack of enough food and clothes were my biggest troubles. I often had to fight dogs for scraps of food and I had no bed to sleep on. Sometimes in very cold winters I slept in an old corn sack with my feet out and they would get frostbitten. There were times when I wished I had never been born.
On top of all these troubles there was Aunt Katy, a mean spirited slave woman in charge of the kitchen and the younger children. She was hard on all of us children, including her own. But she would often give some of our food, which was never enough, to her children.