Mrs. Isaac Riley

I was born in Maryland, and raised in Perry County, Mo. Where I was raised, the treatment was kind. I used to hear of separations of families, but never saw any. I never saw the lash used, nor the paddle, nor ever heard of the abuse of slaves until I came into Canada. I see many here, who have suffered from hard treatment, and who have seen it practised on others,—but I never saw an overseer, nor a negro-trader in my life; if I did, I did n’t know it. I never knew any thing about places they call “the quarters,” in my life. I could not go when I pleased, nor come when I pleased, but was sometimes allowed to go out without a pass ten or twelve miles from home. I was never stopped on my way by patrols—never heard about such things where I was raised. I was never sent to school,—but my master, who had owned my mother, and raised me from the cradle, was very kind, and taught me to read and spell some,—but not to write.

I used often to think that I would like to be as free as the white people were. I often told them, when they made me angry, that they had no more business with me, than I had with them.

My master was very particular about my having clothing and food enough. When I first came to Canada, the colored people seemed cold and indifferent to each other; and so it was with the white people and the colored. It seemed as if the white people did not want to speak to us. I took this very much to heart, for where I grew up, the white people talk freely to their neighbors’ colored people. I felt so about it, that if they had come for me, I would have gone back willingly.

In Missouri, when my first child was young, up to seventeen months old, when I left, I had no care of it, except to nurse it,—the white people took all the care of it.

For two years before I left, my husband talked of coming to Canada. I felt no desire for leaving. But [a young man, a relative of my master] often persuaded me to leave for Canada,—and he talked with a great deal of reason. He said he would not, if he were I, bring my boy up to be a slave: “you do n’t know,” he would say, “how long [the old gentleman] may live,—and when he dies, you may come under altogether different treatment.” At last, when there was a camp-meeting, I told my husband we had better leave, as it might be so by and by, that we could not leave at all. We left, and made a long camp-meeting of it.

We crossed over at Windsor, and had rather hard times about Potico, among the French,—there’s where the people seemed so distant. I thought if Canada was all like that place, it was a hard place. We stayed there a few months, and went to St. Catherines, where we did better. After a while, we heard that Mr. King was buying a place to settle the colored people. We came up here before it was surveyed, and Mr. Riley helped the surveyors. He took one hundred acres of land, and we are well contented. If I do not live to see it, perhaps my children will, that this will one day be a great place.

My two oldest children go to school. The oldest is well along, and studies Latin and Greek. The other three are not old enough to go to school. We have good schools here,—music and needlework are taught.

I think my present condition here far preferable to what it would have been in slavery. There we were in darkness,—here we are in light. My children also would have grown up, had I remained there, in ignorance and darkness.