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Updated: May 16, 2025
At Runiroi, the weaver, Scip, was a first-class workman, and very proud of his work. I often had sets of very pretty towels woven in a damask pattern of mixed flax and cotton. The winter clothing was of wool, taken from our own sheep. The carpenters at Runiroi were Jim, the head carpenter, Austin, and Bill, who were all good workmen.
The church at Runiroi was large and comfortably furnished with seats; colored texts were upon the walls, and the bell, which summoned the people on Sunday mornings, swung amid the branches of a giant oak. Both your great-grandfather and grandfather employed a chaplain. At Runiroi, he officiated only upon alternate Sundays, as the people liked best to listen to Carpenter Jim.
The others were "The Lower Plantation" and "Over the Swamp." At Runiroi we lived and called ourselves at home, and of it I have preserved the clearest recollection and the fondest memories.
His residence was at Conacanarra, where the dwelling stood upon a bluff commanding a fine view of the Roanoke river, and, with the pretty house of the head overseer, the small church, and other minor buildings, looked like a small village beneath the great elms and oaks. Your grandfather's principal plantation, and our winter home, was Runiroi, in Bertie county.
The house at Runiroi was a comfortable, old, rambling structure, in a green yard and flower garden, not ugly, but quite innocent of any pretensions at comeliness. Neither was there, to many, a bit of picturesque beauty in the flat surroundings; and yet this very flatness did lend a charm peculiar to itself.
It was upon one of these rides that your grandfather told me how, when he was about twelve years old, and spending his Christmas holidays at Runiroi with his grandfather, he once said that he could shoot one hundred squirrels between sunrise and sunset.
Our home at Runiroi stood some distance from the river, but the dwelling at Conacanara was upon a bluff just over the stream. Beside the sale crops of cotton and corn, sweet potatoes were raised in large quantities for the negroes, to which they were allowed to help themselves without stint, also a summer patch of coarse vegetables such as they liked.
I have known freshets in March to inundate the country for miles. At one time there was not a foot of dry land upon one of the Runiroi plantations. It was upon a mild night in that month that I sat upon the porch nearly all through the night, feeling too anxious to sleep, for your grandfather, the overseer, and every man on the plantation were at the river, working upon the embankments.
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