What is a pattyroller?

Answer 1

I came across the term pattyrollers (patterollers) quite frequently in the book "My Folks Don't Want Me to Talk about Slavery," edited by Belinda Hurmence. This book contained a selection of "Slave Narratives," that is, interviews with former slaves written down in the late 1930's as part of the depression-era Federal Writers' Project.

It seems the slaves were told told pattyrollers would get them if they ever ran off. The pattyrollers, they believed would beat if not outright kill them. I take this to be a mythical boogeyman.

The complete transcripts can be found at the library of congress:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/

In these transcripts, the word is invariably spelled patterollers, although the book I mention above always revises it to pattyrollers.

Here is a typical quote exactly as it appears in one of the transcripts:

"I heard 'em talk about patterollers so much I wus skeered so I could hardly sleep at night sometimes. I was 'fraid dey would come an' catch me but I neber seed one in my life."