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Excerpted from from Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg: Maryland Slave Narratives
Recorded on 11/15/37.
CHARLES COLES, Ex-slave. Reference: Personal interview with Charles Coles at his home, 1106 Sterling St., Baltimore, Md.
Mr. and Mrs. Dorsey conducted regular religious services of the Catholic church on the farm in a chapel erected for that purpose and in which the slaves were taught the catechism and some learned how to read and write and were assisted by some Catholic priests who came to the farm on church holidays and on Sundays for that purpose. When a child was born, it was baptised by the priest, and given names and they were recorded in the Bible. We were taught the rituals of the Catholic church and when any one died, the funeral was conducted by a priest, the corpse was buried in the Dorseys' graveyard, a lot of about 1-1/2 acres, surrounded by cedar trees and well cared for. The only difference in the graves was that the Dorsey people had marble markers and the slaves had plain stones.
Maryland 9/14/37 Guthrie
PHILLIP JOHNSON, An Ex-Slave. Ref: Phillip Johnson, R.F.D. Poolesville, Md.
I'll be ninety years old next December. I dunno the day. My Missis had the colored folks ages written in a book but it was destroyed when the Confederate soldiers came through. But she had a son born two or three months younger than me and she remember that I was born in December, 1847, but she had forgot the day of the month."
When my Missis took me away from the river bottom I lived in Poolesville where the Kohlhoss home and garage is. I worked around the house and garden. I remember when the Yankee and Confederate soldiers both came to Poolesville. Capn Sam White (son of the doctor) he join the Confederate in Virginia. He come home and say he goin to take me along back with him for to serve him. But the Yankees came and he left very sudden and leave me behind. I was glad I didn't have to go with him. I saw all that fightin around Poolesville. I used to like to watch em fightin. I saw a Yankee soldier shoot a Confederate and kill him. He raised his gun twice to shoot but he kept dodgin around the house an he didn' want to shoot when he might hit someone else. When he ran from the house he shot him.
I think preaching the gospel is the greatest work in the world. But folks don't seem to take the interest in church that they used to.