Kirkwood's Slaves Among his Six Children--The Writer and his Two Sisters
Fall to Mrs. Wilson--The Parting Between Mother and Child--Deprived of a
Fond Mother Forever--Old Uncle Jack--Wilson Buys Uncle Ben from
Strucker--Uncle Ben Runs Away and is Hunted with Blood-Hounds--Two
Hundred Dollars Reward.


I was a slave, and was born in Atala County, Mississippi, near the town
of Rockford, on the third day of March, 1833. My father and mother both
being slaves, of course my pedigree is not traceable, by me, farther
back than my parents. Our family belonged to a man named Kirkwood, who
was a large slave-owner. Kirkwood died when I was about nine years old,
after which, upon the settlement of the affairs of his estate, the
slaves belonging to the estate were divided equally, as to value, among
the six heirs. There were about seventy-five slaves to be divided into
six lots; and great was the tribulation among the poor blacks when they
learned that they were to be separated.

When the division was completed two of my sisters and myself were cast
into one lot, my mother into another, and my father into another, and
the rest of the family in the other lots. Young and slave as I was, I
felt the pang of separation from my loved and revered mother; child that
I was I mourned for mother, even before our final separation, as one
dead to me forever. So early to be deprived of a fond mother, by the
"law," gave me my first view of the curse of slavery. Until this time I
did not know what trouble was, but from then until the tocsin of freedom
was sounded through the glorious Emancipation Proclamation by the
immortal Abraham Lincoln, I passed through hardship after hardship, in
quick succession, and many, many times I have almost seen and tasted
death.