M.S. Fayman was born free to wealthy free parents in Louisiana. Her family was Creole – her grandmother was Haitian (Black) and her grandfather was French. Her parents sent her to a private boarding school when she was five years old. When she was ten, she was kidnapped at school and forcibly enslaved in Kentucky by Buckram Haynes, who forced M.S. Fayman to teach his children French until she escaped. After her escape, she returned home, attended Fisk University and became a French teacher there. In this excerpt, the interviewer recounts M.S. Fayman’s kidnapping and description of her enslavement in the first person.
… [My family] lived in a large and spacious house surrounded by flowers and situated on a farm containing about 750 acres, on which we raised pelicans for sale in the market at New Orleans.
When I was about 5 years old I was sent to a private School in Baton Rouge, conducted by French sisters [nuns], where I stayed until I was kidnapped in 1860. At that time I did not know how to speak English; French was the language spoken in my household and by the people in the parish [county]. Baton Rouge, situated on the Mississippi, was a river port and stopping place for all large river boats, especially between New Orleans and large towns and cities north. We children were taken out by the sisters after school and on Saturdays and holidays to walk. One of the places we went was the wharf. One day in June and on a Saturday a large boat was at the wharf going north on the Mississippi River. We children were there. Somehow, I was separated from the other children. I was taken up bodily by a white man, carried on the boat, put in a cabin and kept there until we got to Louisville, Kentucky, where I was taken off. After I arrived in Louisville I was taken to a farm near Frankfort [Kentucky] and installed there, virtually a slave until 1864, when I escaped through the kindness of a delightful Episcopalian woman from Cincinnati, Ohio.
As I could not speak English, my chores were to act as a tutor and companion for the children of Pierce Buckran Haynes, a well known slave trader and plantation owner in Kentucky. Haynes wanted his children to speak French and it was my duty to teach them. I was the private companion of three girls and one small boy, each day I had to talk French and write French for them. They became very proficient in French, and I in the rudiments [basics] of the English language. I slept in the children’s quarters with the Haynes’ children, ate and played with them. I had all the privileges of the household accorded me with the exception of one, I never was taken off nor permitted to leave the plantation. While on the plantation I wore good clothes, similar to those of the white children.
Haynes was a merciless brutal tyrant with his slaves, punishing them severely and cruelly both by the lash and in the jail on the plantation…On the farm the slaves were assigned a task to do each day and In the event it was not finished they were severely whipped. While I never saw a slave whipped, I did see them afterwards, they were very badly marked and striped by the overseers who did the whipping….
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
M.S. Fayman
1850 (approx. 87)
Rogers
Pierce Buckram Haynes
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Baltimore, MD
MD
Saint-Nazaire, LA
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Education, Kidnapped, Resistance, Escape
First Person, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, Slave Traders
The interviewer recounts her interview with Peter Bruner in the third person. Enslaver John Bell Bruner was “very cruel” to Peter Bruner. John Bell Bruner and his wife frequently whipped Peter Bruner and never gave him enough to eat. In the excerpt below, the interviewer describes Peter Bruner frequent attempts to escape, including his successful escape after which he enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War.
…Peter endured torture as long as he could and finally decided to escape. He went to Richmond, Kentucky on to Lexington. On his way, he made a contract with a man to drive his horses to Orleans, but was caught while in Lexington. On his way, they caught him and took him to jail and he remained until his master came for him. This did not down him, for just as soon as he could he escaped again, and this time got as far as Xenia, Ohio, but was again caught and brought back. This time he was severely beaten for three hours.
When 17 years old, Peter was hired out to Jimmy Benton, who was more cruel than John Bruner, but was again brought back. It was then that he tried again to escape… This was about the year 1861, when the war had begun. Again he was caught and taken back…. He escaped several times but never could seem to get anywhere. Once when he and another slave, Phil, escaped they were caught and made to walk the entire distance barefoot. After this Peter was chained each night to a chair. One morning while eating his breakfast he heard a knock at the door and on opening it he found a troop of Union Home Guards. Jim Benton and John Bruner were taken to prison…
When John Bruner was taken from [released from] Prison, he was much better to Peter. Soon after John was released from Prison, Peter escaped again. This time he had joined a regiment in the war. He went through hardships, cold, hunger, and illness…
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Peter Bruner
1845 (91)
Evelyn McLemore
John Bell Bruner
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Estill County, KY
KY
Winchester, KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Escape, Resistance, Violence
Estill County, Clark County, Third Person, Whipped, Union Troops, Veteran or Widow, Hired Out
Julia King lived with her entire family on the same plantation. When she was very young, her father, mother and sister all ran away and escaped via the Underground Railroad. Here, she tells the tale, as she knows it, of her mother’s escape.
Mamma was keeping house. Papa paid the white people who owned them, for her time. He left before Mamma did. He ran away to Canada on the Underground Railroad.
My mother’s mistress—I don’t remember her name—used to come and take Mary with her to market every day. The morning my mother ran away, her mistress decided she wouldn’t take Mary with her to market. Mamma was glad, because she had almost made up her mind to go, even without Mary.
Mamma went down to the boat. A man on the boat told Mamma not to answer the door for anybody, until he gave her the signal. The man was a Quaker, one of those people who says ‘Thee’ and ‘Thou’. Mary kept on calling out the mistress’s name and Mamma couldn’t keep her still.
When the boat docked, the man told Mamma he thought her master was about. He told Mamma to put a veil over her face, in case the master was coming. He told Mamma he would cut the master’s heart out and give it to her, before he would ever let her be taken.
She left the boat before reaching Canada, somewhere on the Underground Railroad—Detroit, I think—and a woman who took her in said: ‘Come in, my child, you’re safe now.’ Then Mamma met my father in Windsor. I think they were taken to Canada free.
The interviewer uses quotation marks to indicate the first person recollections of George Morrison. It is important to note that the first person narrative is still written by the interviewer, not by George Morrison himself. In this excerpt, George Morrison describes his life as an enslaved person, his relationship with his master, and how some enslaved people escaped.
*Historically-used terms that are offensive, marginalizing and/or disparaging have been removed from the transcripts and replaced with [redacted]. See more information.
…“I [George Morrison] was born in Union County, Kentucky, near Morganfield. My master was Mr. Ray, he made me call him Mr. Ray, wouldn’t let me call him Master. He said I was his little free [redacted].”
When asked if there were many slaves on Mr. Ray’s farm, he [George Morrison] said, “Yes ma’am, there were seven cabins of us. I was the oldest child in our family. Mr. Ray said he didn’t want me in the tobacco, so I stayed at the house and waited on the women folk and went after the cows when I was big enough. I carried my stick over my shoulder, for I was afraid of snakes.
Mr. Ray was always very good to me, he liked to play with me, cause I was so full of tricks and so mischievous. He gave me a pair of boots with brass toes. I shined them up every day, til you could see your face in them…
…Yes Ma’am. I remember when people used to take wagon loads of corn to the market in Louisville, and they would bring back home lots of groceries and things. A [redacted] man told me he had come north to the market in Louisville with his master, and was working hard unloading the corn when a white man walks up to him, shows him some money and asks him if he wanted to be free? He said he stopped right then and went with the man, who hid him in his wagon under the provisions and they crossed the Ohio River right on the ferry. That’s the way lots of them got across here…”
Enslaved from birth, George Fordman was not Black, but part indigenous and part white. George Fordman explains to his interviewer how he came to be enslaved in a tragic history that begins with White people forcibly driving his indigenous ancestors from their home in Indiana in 1838. After his ancestors walked all the way to Alabama, the George family “automatically” enslaved them, even though they were not Black. In this excerpt the interviewer recounts the words of George Fordman as he describes the “dark trail” of his childhood, in which the reader learns that George Fordman’s enslaver was his father and his grandfather. At several points in the interview, the interviewer inserts their own narrative and conclusions.
Teachers may need to warn students before reading that this excerpt refers to an enslaver incestuously raping an enslaved person. The excerpt also references an enslaver’s death.
…As Eliza George, daughter of [enslaver] Ford George and [indigneous enslaved person] Courtney Hawk, grew into young womanhood the young master Ford George went more often to social functions. He was admired for his skill with firearms and for his horsemanship. While Courtney and his child remained at the plantation Ford enjoyed the companionship of the beautiful women of the vicinity. At last he brought home the beautiful Loraine, his young bride. Courtney was stoical as only an Indian can be. She showed no hurt but helped Mistress Hester and Mistress Loraine with the housework.
Here George Fortman paused to let his blinded eyes look back into the long ago. Then he again continued with his story of the dark trail.
Mistress Loraine became mother of two sons and a daughter and the big white two-story house… [in Kentucky] became a place of laughter and happy occasions, so my mother told me many times.
Suddenly sorrow settled down over the home and the laughter turned into wailing, for Ford George’s body was found pierced through the heart and the… [half white, half indigenous] Eliza, was nowhere to be found.
The young master’s body lay in state for many days. Friends and neighbors came bringing flowers. His mother, bowed with grief, looked on the still face of her son and understood—understood why death had come and why Eliza had gone away.
The beautiful home on the Cumberland river with its more than 600 acres of productive land was put into the hands of an administrator of estates to be readjusted in the interest of the George heirs. It was only then Mistress Hester went to Aunt Lucy and demanded of her to tell where Eliza could be found.
‘She has gone to Alabama, Ole Mistus’, said Aunt Lucy, ‘Eliza was scared to stay here.’ A party of searchers were sent out to look for Eliza. They found her secreted in a canebrake in the lowlands of Alabama nursing her baby boy at her breast. They took Eliza and the baby back to Kentucky. I am that baby, that child of unsatisfactory birth.
The face of George Fortman registered sorrow and pain, it had been hard for him to retell the story of the dark road to strange ears.
My white uncles had told Mistress Hester that if Eliza brought me back they were going to build a fire and put me in it, my birth was so unsatisfactory to all of them, but Mistress Hester always did what she believed was right and I was brought up by my own mother.
We lived in a cabin at the slave quarters and mother worked in the broom cane. Mistress Hester named me Ford George, in derision, but remained my friend. She was never angry with my mother. She knew a slave had to submit to her master and besides Eliza did not know she was Master Ford George’s daughter..
[The following is the conclusion of the interviewer:] The truth had been told at last. The master was both the father of Eliza and the father of Eliza’s son…
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
George Fordman
Unknown (Unknown)
Lauana Creel
Ford George
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Evansville, IN
IN
AL or KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Family, Violence, Resistance, Escape
Trigg County, First Person, Enslaver Father, Notable
Barney Stone was 91 years old when interviewed. He was enslaved for 16 years before he escaped and joined the Union Army during the Civil War. After the Civil War, Barney Stone was a self-taught teacher at a Black school and then became a preacher. The interviewer notes that Barney Stone had a “remarkable memory,” which is evident in the excerpt below where Barney Stone recounts multiple examples of his enslaver’s brutal treatment of enslaved people. In this excerpt, Barney Stone recounts how his enslaver sold his sister, mother and brother. The excerpt ends with Barney Stone reuniting with his mother and brother.
*Historically-used terms that are offensive, marginalizing and/or disparaging have been removed from the transcripts and replaced with [redacted]. See more information.
…Master would never sell me because I was regarded as the best young slave on the plantation. Different from many other slaves, I was kept on the plantation from the day I was born until the day I ran away…
Many times, as I have said before, our treatment on our plantation was horrible. When I was just a small boy, I witnessed my sister sold and taken away. One day one of the horses came into the barn and master noticed that she was crippled. He flew into a rage and thought I had hurt the horse, either that, or that I knew who did it. I told him that I did not do it and he demanded that I tell him who did it, if I didn’t. I did not know and when I told him so, he secured a whip tied me to a post and whipped me until I was covered with blood. I begged him, “Master, master, please don’t whip me, I do not know who did it.” He then took out his pocket knife and I would have been killed if Missus (his dear wife) had not made him quit. She untied me and cared for me.
Many has been the time, I have seen my mammy beaten mercilessly and for no good reason. One day, not long before the out-break of the Civil War, a [redacted] buyer came and I witnessed my dear Mammy and my one year old baby brother, sold. I saw her taken away, never to see her again until I found her twenty-seven years later at Clarksburg, Tennessee. My baby brother was with her, but I did not know him until Mammy told me who he was, he had grown into a large man. That was a happy meeting. After those experiences of sixteen long years in Hell, as a slave, I was very bitter against the white man, until after I ran away and joined the Union army.
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Barney Stone
1847 (91)
Robert C. Irvin
Lemuel Stone
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Noblesville, IN
KY
KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Family, Violence, Escape, Resistance
First Person, Third Person, Whipped, Witness Extreme Cruelty, Sold, Slave Traders, Union Troops, Veteran or Widow, Notable, Spencer County
Unlike most of the interviews in this collection, the interviewer Martin Richardson was part of the Negro Writers’ Unit in Florida, a subgroup of the Federal Writers’ Project that employed Black workers.
Interviewer Martin Richardson’s introduction notes that he is recording, “Verbatim Interview with Arnold Gragston, 97-year-old ex-slave whose early life was spent helping slaves to freedom across the Ohio River, while he, himself, remained in bondage. As he puts it, he guesses he could be called a ‘conductor’ on the underground railway.” In this first person excerpt, Martin Richardson recounts Arnold Gragston’s account of how he became a conductor on the Underground Railroad.
…Most of the slaves didn’t know when they was born, but I did. You see, I was born on a Christmas morning–it was in 1840; I was a full grown man when I finally got my freedom.
Before I got it, though, I helped a lot of others get theirs. Lord only knows how many; might have been as much as two-three hundred. It was way more than a hundred, I know…
It was because he [Mr. Tabb, the man who enslaved Arnold Gragston] used to let me go around in the day and night so much that I came to be the one who carried the running away slaves over the river. It was funny the way I started it too.
I didn’t have no idea of ever getting mixed up in any sort of business like that until one special night. I hadn’t even thought of rowing across the river myself.
But one night I had gone on another plantation courting, and the old woman whose house I went to told me she had a real pretty girl there who wanted to go across the river and would I take her? I was scared and
backed out in a hurry. But then I saw the girl, and she was such a pretty little thing, brown-skinned and kinda rosy, and looking as scared as I was feeling, so it wasn’t long before I was listening to the old woman tell me when to take her and where to leave her on the other side.
I didn’t have nerve enough to do it that night, though, and I told them to wait for me until tomorrow night. All the next day I kept seeing Mister Tabb laying a rawhide across my back, or shooting me, and kept seeing that scared little brown girl back at the house, looking at me with her big eyes and asking me if I wouldn’t just row her across to Ripley. Me and Mr. Tabb lost, and soon as dust settled that night, I was at the old lady’s house.
I don’t know how I ever rowed the boat across the river the current was strong and I was trembling. I couldn’t see a thing there in the dark, but I felt that girl’s eyes. We didn’t dare to whisper, so I couldn’t tell her how sure I was that Mr. Tabb or some of the others owners would tear me up when they found out what I had done. I just knew they would find out.
I was worried, too, about where to put her out of the boat. I couldn’t ride her across the river all night, and I didn’t know a thing about the other side. I had heard a lot about it from other slaves but I thought it was just about like Mason County, with slaves and masters, overseers and rawhides; and so, I just knew that if I pulled the boat up and went to asking people where to take her I would get a beating or get killed.
I don’t know whether it seemed like a long time or a short time, now–it’s so long ago; I know it was a long time rowing there in the cold and worrying. But it was short, too, ’cause as soon as I did get on the other side the big-eyed, brown-skin girl would be gone. Well, pretty soon I saw a tall light and I remembered what the old lady had told me about looking for that light and rowing to it. I did; and when I got up to it, two men reached down and grabbed her; I started trembling all over again, and praying. Then, one of the men took my arm and I just felt down inside of me that the Lord had got ready for me. ‘You hungry, Boy?’ is what he asked me, and if he hadn’t been holding me I think I would have fallen backward into the river.
That was my first trip; it took me a long time to get over my scared feeling, but I finally did, and I soon found myself going back across the river, with two and three people, and sometimes a whole boatload. I got so I used to make three and four trips a month…
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Arnold Gragston
1840 (97)
Martin Richardson
Jack Tabb
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Eddy, FL
FL
KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Underground Railroad, Conductor of Underground Railroad, Escape, Resistance
First Person, Dialect, Whipped, Slave Patrollers, Notable, Mason County
Unlike most of the interviewers in this collection, the interviewer Martin Richardson was part of the Negro Writers’ Unit in Florida, a subgroup of the Federal Writers’ Project that employed Black workers.
Interviewer Martin Richardson’s introduction notes that he is recording a, “Verbatim Interview with Arnold Gragston, 97-year-old ex-slave whose early life was spent helping slaves to freedom across the Ohio River, while he, himself, remained in bondage. As he puts it, he guesses he could be called a ‘conductor’ on the underground railway…”
The majority of this remarkable interview is included below as it offers a rare, rich, personal account of a conductor on the Underground Railroad. This account is accessible to students and documents Arnold Gragston’s actions and also his motivations. Martin Richardson recounts in the first person Arnold Gragston’s experience as an enslaved person, how he became a conductor, the process of escaping, the attitudes of multiple White enslavers, and finally Arnold Gragston’s own escape.
…Most of the slaves didn’t know when they was born, but I did. You see, I was born on a Christmas morning–it was in 1840; I was a full grown man when I finally got my freedom.
Before I got it, though, I helped a lot of others get theirs. Lord only knows how many; might have been as much as two-three hundred. It was way more than a hundred, I know…
…Mr. Tabb [who enslaved Arnold Gragston] was a pretty good man. He used to beat us, sure; but not nearly so much as others did, some of his own kin people, even. But he was kinda funny sometimes; he used to have a special slave who didn’t have nothing to do but teach the rest of us–we had about ten on the plantation, and a lot on the other plantations near us–how to read and write and figure. Mr. Tabb liked us to know how to figure. But sometimes when he would send for us and we would be a long time coming, he would ask us where we had been. If we told him we had been learning to read, he would near beat the daylights out of us–after getting somebody to teach us; I think he did some of that so that the other owners wouldn’t say he was spoiling his slaves.
He was funny about us marrying, too. He would let us go a-courting on the other plantations near anytime we liked, if we were good, and if we found somebody we wanted to marry, and she was on a plantation that belonged to one of his kin folks or a friend, he would swap a slave so that the husband and wife could be together. Sometimes, when he couldn’t do this, he would let a slave work all day on his plantation, and live with his wife at night on her plantation. Some of the other owners was always talking about his spoiling us.
He wasn’t a Democrat like the rest of them in the county; he belonged to the ‘know-nothin’ party and he was a real leader in it. He used to always be making speeches, and sometimes his best friends wouldn’t be speaking to him for days at a time.
Mr. Tabb was always especially good to me. He used to let me go all about–I guess he had to; couldn’t get too much work out of me even when he kept me right under his eyes. I learned fast, too, and I think he kinda liked that..’
It was because he used to let me go around in the day and night so much that I came to be the one who carried the running away slaves over the river. It was funny the way I started it too.
I didn’t have no idea of ever getting mixed up in any sort of business like that until one special night. I hadn’t even thought of rowing across the river myself.
But one night I had gone on another plantation courting, and the old woman whose house I went to told me she had a real pretty girl there who wanted to go across the river and would I take her? I was scared and backed out in a hurry. But then I saw the girl, and she was such a pretty little thing, brown-skinned and kinda rosy, and looking as scared as I was feeling, so it wasn’t long before I was listening to the old woman tell me when to take her and where to leave her on the other side.
I didn’t have nerve enough to do it that night, though, and I told them to wait for me until tomorrow night. All the next day I kept seeing Mister Tabb laying a rawhide across my back, or shooting me, and kept seeing that scared little brown girl back at the house, looking at me with her big eyes and asking me if I wouldn’t just row her across to Ripley. Me and Mr. Tabb lost, and soon as dust settled that night, I was at the old lady’s house.
I don’t know how I ever rowed the boat across the river the current was strong and I was trembling. I couldn’t see a thing there in the dark, but I felt that girl’s eyes. We didn’t dare to whisper, so I couldn’t tell her how sure I was that Mr. Tabb or some of the others owners would tear me up when they found out what I had done. I just knew they would find out.
I was worried, too, about where to put her out of the boat. I couldn’t ride her across the river all night, and I didn’t know a thing about the other side. I had heard a lot about it from other slaves but I thought it was just about like Mason County, with slaves and masters, overseers and rawhides; and so, I just knew that if I pulled the boat up and went to asking people where to take her I would get a beating or get killed.
I don’t know whether it seemed like a long time or a short time, now–it’s so long ago; I know it was a long time rowing there in the cold and worrying. But it was short, too, ’cause as soon as I did get on the other side the big-eyed, brown-skin girl would be gone. Well, pretty soon I saw a tall light and I remembered what the old lady had told me about looking for that light and rowing to it. I did; and when I got up to it, two men reached down and grabbed her; I started trembling all over again, and praying. Then, one of the men took my arm and I just felt down inside of me that the Lord had got ready for me. ‘You hungry, Boy?’ is what he asked me, and if he hadn’t been holding me I think I would have fallen backward into the river.
That was my first trip; it took me a long time to get over my scared feeling, but I finally did, and I soon found myself going back across the river, with two and three people, and sometimes a whole boatload. I got so I used to make three and four trips a month.
What did my passengers look like? I can’t tell you any more about it than you can, and you wasn’t there. After that first girl–no, I never did see her again–I never saw my passengers. I would have to be the black nights of the moon when I would carry them, and I would meet them out in the open or in a house without a single light. The only way I knew who they were was to ask them; What you say? And they would answer, Menare. I don’t know what that word meant–it came from the Bible. I only know that that was the password I used, and all of them I took over told it to me before I took them.
I guess you wonder what I did with them after I got them over the river. Well, there in Ripley was a man named Mr. Rankins; I think the rest of his name was John. He had a regular station there on his place for escaping slaves. You see, Ohio was a free state and once they got over the river from Kentucky or Virginia. Mr. Rankins could strut them all around town, and nobody would bother them. The only reason we used to land quietly at night was so that whoever brought them could go back for more, and because we had to be careful that none of the owners had followed us. Every once in a while they would follow a boat and catch their slaves back. Sometimes they would shoot at whoever was trying to save the poor devils.
Mr. Rankins had a regular station for the slaves. He had a big lighthouse in his yard, about thirty feet high and he kept it burning all night. It always meant freedom for slave if he could get to this light.
Sometimes Mr. Rankins would have twenty or thirty slaves that had run away on his place at the time. It must have cost him a whole lots to keep them and feed them, but I think some of his friends helped him.
Those who wanted to stay around that part of Ohio could stay, but didn’t many of them do it, because there was too much danger that you would be walking along free one night, feel a hand over your mouth, and be back across the river and in slavery again in the morning. And nobody in the world ever got a chance to know as much misery as a slave that had escaped and been caught.
So a whole lot of them went on North to other parts of Ohio, or to New York, Chicago or Canada; Canada was popular then because all of the slaves thought it was the last gate before you got all the way inside of heaven. I don’t think there was much chance for a slave to make a living in Canada, but didn’t many of them come back. They seem like they rather starve up there in the cold than to be back in slavery.
The Army soon started taking a lot of them, too. They could enlist in the Union Army and get good wages, more food than they ever had, and have all the little gals waving at them when they passed. Them blue uniforms was a nice change, too.
No, I never got anything from a single one of the people I carried over the river to freedom. I didn’t want anything; after had made a few trips I got to like it, and even though I could have been free any night myself, I figured I wasn’t getting along so bad so I would stay on Mr. Tabb’s place and help the others get free. I did it for four years.
I don’t know to this day how he never knew what I was doing; I used to take some awful chances, and he knew I must have been up to something; I wouldn’t do much work in the day, would never be in my house at night, and when he would happen to visit the plantation where I had said I was going I wouldn’t be there. Sometimes I think he did know and wanted me to get the slaves away that way so he wouldn’t have to cause hard feelings by freeing them.
I think Mr. Tabb used to talk a lot to Mr. John Fee; Mr. Fee was a man who lived in Kentucky, but Lord! how that man hated slavery! He used to always tell us (we never let our owners see us listening to him, though) that God didn’t intend for some men to be free and some men be in slavery. He used to talk to the owners, too, when they would listen to him, but mostly they hated the sight of John Fee.
In the night, though, he was a different man, for every slave who came through his place going across the river he had a good word, something to eat and some kind of rags, too, if it was cold. He always knew just what to tell you to do if anything went wrong, and sometimes I think he kept slaves there on his place till they could be rowed across the river. Helped us a lot.
I almost ran the business in the ground after I had been carrying the slaves across for nearly four years. It was in 1863, and one night I carried across about twelve on the same night. Somebody must have seen us, because they set out after me as soon as I stepped out of the boat back on the Kentucky side; from that time on they were after me. Sometimes they would almost catch me; I had to run away from Mr. Tabb’s plantation and live in the fields and in the woods. I didn’t know what a bed was from one week to another. I would sleep in a cornfield tonight, up in the branches of a tree tomorrow night, and buried in a haypile the next night; the River, where I had carried so many across myself, was no good to me; it was watched too close.
Finally, I saw that I could never do any more good in Mason County, so I decided to take my freedom, too. I had a wife by this time, and one night we quietly slipped across and headed for Mr. Rankin’s bell and light. It looked like we had to go almost to China to get across that river: I could hear the bell and see the light on Mr. Rankin’s place, but the harder I rowed, the farther away it got, and I knew if I didn’t make it I’d get killed. But finally, I pulled up by the lighthouse, and went on to my freedom–just a few months before all of the slaves got theirs. I didn’t stay in Ripley, though; I wasn’t taking no chances. I went on to Detroit and still live there with most of 10 children and 31 grandchildren.
The bigger ones don’t care so much about hearing it now, but the little ones never get tired of hearing how their grandpa brought Emancipation to loads of slaves he could touch and feel, but never could see…
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Arnold Gragston
1840 (97)
Martin Richardson
Jack Tabb
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Eddy, FL
FL
KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Underground Railroad, Conductor of Underground Railroad, Resistance, Education, Escape, Violence, Marriage
First Person, Dialect, Whipped, Slave Patrollers, Notable, Mason County
In this third person narrative, the interviewer describes two escape attempts by Harriet and her young daughter Adah. The excerpt begins with the interviewer explaining Harriet’s motivations for escaping, describes a failed escape attempt, and then recounts Harriet and Adah successfully escaping to Ohio. Teachers might note the interviewer’s word choice of “mildly punished” to describe Harriet’s imprisonment in an upstairs room.
*The term “negroes” was replaced, but not removed, from the excerpt below. The replacement word is denoted in italics. This historically-used term was replaced due to its offensive, marginalizing, and/or disparaging nature. See more information.
A custom prevailed throughout the southern states that the firstborn of each slave maiden [woman] should be the son or daughter of her master and the girls were forced into maternity at puberty. The mothers naturally resisted this terrible practice and Harriott was determined to prevent her child [Adah] from being victimized.
One planned escape was thwarted; when the girl [Adah] was about twelve years of age the mother [Harriet] tried to take her to a place of safety but they were overtaken on the road to the ferry where they hoped to be put across the Ohio River. They were carried back to the plantation and the mother [Harriet] was mildly punished and imprisoned in an upstairs room.
The little girl knew her mother was imprisoned and often climbed up to a window where the two could talk together.
[On their second escape attempt, Adah] … brought a large knife from Mrs. McClain’s pantry and by the aid of that tool the lock was pried from the prison door and the mother made her way into the open world about midnight…
Under the cover of night, the two fugitives [Adah and Harriet] traveled the three miles to Henderson, there they secreted themselves under the house of Mrs. Margaret Bentley until darkness fell over the world to cover their retreat. Imagine the frightened Harriet and Adah stealthily creeping through the woods in constant fear of being recaptured. Federal soldiers put them across the river [into Ohio, a free state] … The husband of Harriott, Milton McClain, and her son Jerome were volunteers in a negro regiment [in the Union Army]…the enlistment of slaves made enlisted enslaved people free as well as their wives and children, so, by that statute [law], Harriott McClain and her daughter should have been given their freedom.
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Adah Isabelle Suggs
1862 (Unknown)
Lauana Creel
Jackson McClain, Louisa McClain
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Evansville, IN
IN
Henderson, KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Resistance, Escape, Failed escape, Family
Third person, Union Troops, Slave Patrollers, Henderson County
Suggs_A_1
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