a pump-maker, and I was placed with a stonemason. We were both in a town
some six miles from home. As the men with whom we lived were not
slaveholders, we enjoyed some relief from the peculiar evils of slavery.
Each of us lived in a family where there was no other negro.

The slaveholders in that state often hire the children of their slaves out
to non-slaveholders, not only because they save themselves the expense of
taking care of them, but in this way they get among their slaves useful
trades. They put a bright slave-boy with a tradesman, until he gets such a
knowledge of the trade as to be able to do his own work, and then he takes
him home. I remained with the stonemason until I was eleven years of age:
at this time I was taken home. This was another serious period in my
childhood; I was separated from my older brother, to whom I was much
attached; he continued at his place, and not only learned the trade to
great perfection, but finally became the property of the man with whom he
lived, so that our separation was permanent, as we never lived nearer
after, than six miles. My master owned an excellent blacksmith, who had
obtained his trade in the way I have mentioned above. When I returned home
at the age of eleven, I was set about assisting to do the mason-work of a
new smith's shop. This being done, I was placed at the business, which I
soon learned, so as to be called a "first-rate blacksmith." I continued to
work at this business for nine years, or until I was twenty-one, with the
exception of the last seven months.

In the spring of 1828, my master sold me to a Methodist man, named ----,
for the sum of seven hundred dollars. It soon proved that he had not work
enough to keep me employed as a smith, and he offered me for sale again.
On hearing of this, my old master re-purchased me, and proposed to me to
undertake the carpentering business. I had been working at this trade six
months with a white workman, who was building a large barn when I left. I