Mrs. Henry Gowens

My name in the South was Martha Martin. When I came to the North I took the name of Martha Bentley—Bentley being my mother’s name before she was married. My father was my master, Mr.—, who died in 1843. He lived in Georgia, but removed with one set of farm hands to Mississippi. He had one other child by my mother, but it died young. He liberated all the children he had by my mother, and one other slave woman, with one exception—that was a daughter whom he had educated and put to the milliner’s trade. After she had learned the trade, he went to the place where she was, with money to establish her in business. But he found she had two children by a white man. This so enraged him, that he carried her and her two children back to his farm, and put her to work in the field, and there, he said, she was to die. The father of the two children came on, and offered two thousand dollars for the woman and the children, as he wished to marry her. But her father would neither let him have her nor his children. Afterwards he offered three thousand dollars,—then five other grown-up slaves, for Minerva and the two children; but my master told him he would not, but if he ever set foot on the farm again, he would blow his brains out. So, I suppose, they are slaves yet, and will be: for their mistress never was disposed to sell; she would rather keep them and punish them, on account of his having so many wives. But he had told her beforehand, and said she need not find fault with it: all his wives were equally well used. Keep on the right side of him, and he was very kind: every slave would be well treated. He did not mind if they stole from him, but if they stole from another man, he would whip them. He was Scotch Irish.

My mother had been set free on the eastern shore of Maryland, in this way. My mother’s mistress promised my mother’s mother (who was at the time free) that on her death she would set my mother free. When she died, she left her to wait on her niece until the niece died, she being very low,—then her free papers were to be given her. That was in the white woman’s will. The niece died in two or three weeks, and then they talked of selling my mother to the traders, because they had got so little work out of her. Then they all—the whole family—ran away into New Jersey. My master bought them running, and kidnapped my mother and her cousin’s family, although he knew the circumstances, and that they were entitled to their freedom.

When I was twelve years old, my father took me to Cincinnati. He charged me to marry neither a white man nor a black man: if I should, he would take me back south, and put me on the farm. There he paid one year’s tuition in advance, and money for shoes,—we had clothes enough. Two others went with me,—one a half brother, the other a half sister. But I was cheated out of my education: for the guardian in Cincinnati kept the money, but did not send me to school, excepting one year: whereas I was to have gone three. When my father heard of this, he started on to see to it, but fell sick and died before he got there. He was a large, heavy man, and had been liable to sudden fits of illness. When these came on, he would be frightened very much, and would send for some of the pious slaves to come in and pray for him. He was a very wealthy man, and always said he would leave me in comfortable circumstances. But the money which he sent us at different times was kept from us, and it may be that he died without a will.

I remained in the northern States a few years, and then came to Canada. I have five smart children, and send all to school but the two youngest. I mean they shall have a good education; what little knowledge I have, has just made me hungry for more.

My mother was in expectation of being set free, but did not get her free papers. She was religiously inclined, and being afraid of sinning, and thinking she might be left a slave after all, she married a colored man against my father’s consent. For this reason, she remains a slave to this day, as I suppose, but I have not heard from her for thirteen years.

I remember enough of slavery and have heard and seen enough of it to know that it is unfavorable to virtue. I have known many owners to have two or three colored women for wives, and when they got a white wife, keep all. If the slave woman would not comply she would be whipped, or else sold to the lowest, meanest fellow he could find. Some of the masters have their slave children’s hair shaved off, so that people need not notice that they favor them. I have known cases of this kind close by me in Mississippi.