pecuniary means, and unable, from severe illness, to pursue his journey.
In that condition he was discovered by a venerable member of the Society
of Friends, who placed him in a covered waggon and took him to his own
house. There he remained about fifteen days, and by the kind treatment
of his host and hostess, who were what in America are called
"Thompsonians," he was restored to health, and supplied with the means
of pursuing his journey. The name of this, his first kind benefactor,
was "Wells Brown." As William had risen from the degradation of a slave
to the dignity of a man, it was expedient that he should follow the
customs of other men, and adopt a second name. His venerable friend,
therefore, bestowed upon him his own name, which, prefixed by his former
designation, made him "William Wells Brown," a name that will live in
history, while those of the men who claimed him as property would, were
it not for his deeds, have been unknown beyond the town in which they
lived. In nine days from the time he left Wells Brown's house, he
arrived at Cleveland, in the State of Ohio, where he found he could
remain comparatively safe from the pursuit of the man-stealer. Having
obtained employment as a waiter, he remained in that city until the
following spring, when he procured an engagement on board a steam-boat
plying on Lake Erie. In that situation he was enabled, during seven
months, to assist no less than sixty-nine slaves to escape to Canada.
While a slave he had regarded the whites as the natural enemies of his
race. It was, therefore, with no small pleasure that he discovered the
existence of the salt of America, in the despised Abolitionists of the
Northern States. He read with assiduity the writings of Benjamin Lundy,
William Lloyd Garrison, and others; and after his own twenty years'
experience of slavery, it is not surprising that he should have
enthusiastically embraced the principles of "total and immediate
emancipation," and "no union with slaveholders."