My mistress often told me that my father was a planter who owned a
plantation about two miles from ours. He was a white man, born in
Liverpool, England. He died in Lewisville, Alabama, in the year 1875.

I will venture to say that I only saw my father a dozen times, when I
was about four years old; and those times I saw him only from a
distance, as he was driving by the great house of our plantation.
Whenever my mistress saw him going by, she would take me by the hand
and run out upon the piazza, and exclaim, "Stop there, I say! Don't
you want to see and speak to and caress your darling child? She often
speaks of you and wants to embrace her dear father. See what a bright
and beautiful daughter she is, a perfect picture of yourself. Well, I
declare, you are an affectionate father." I well remember that
whenever my mistress would speak thus and upbraid him, he would whip
up his horse and get out of sight and hearing as quickly as possible.
My mistress's action was, of course, intended to humble and shame my
father. I never spoke to him, and cannot remember that he ever noticed
me, or in any way acknowledged me to be his child.

My mother and my mistress were children together, and grew up to be
mothers together. My mother was the cook in my mistress's household.
One morning when master had gone to Eufaula, my mother and my mistress
got into an argument, the consequence of which was that my mother was
whipped, for the first time in her life. Whereupon, my mother refused
to do any more work, and ran away from the plantation. For three years
we did not see her again.

Our plantation was one of several thousand acres, comprising large
level fields, upland, and considerable forests of Southern pine.