St. Catharines
Mrs. —
[The lady who gave the following narrative wished to withhold her name, for private reasons. She is well known at St. Catharines as a very intelligent and respectable person.]
I was held as a slave in—, without even legal right according to the slave laws. When I was ten years old, a young man was punishing me—I resisted: I was in consequence called “a rebellious wretch,” and put out of the family. At the place where I was hired, it happened on communion Sunday in March, that the dogs got hold of a pig, and bit a piece off its ear. In consequence of this misfortune to the pig, a boy of sixteen years, or thereabouts, was whipped in the barn; and a man-slave was tied up to a tree, with his arms extended, and whipped. I was peeping and saw the man whipped. The blood ran as they whipped him. His wife had to take care of him and dress his wounds. It affected me so that I cried and said I would n’t stay at the place,—then the same man—the man of the house—whipped me. At twelve o’clock that night, I ran away to my owners. He came to the folks where I was, and requested them to send me back, lest the others should follow my example. I went back and stayed two weeks,—when I had got within a mile of home, my master got on his horse, and trotted along behind me, to let folks see that he had got the runaway.
After my escape from slavery, I married a free colored man. We were comfortably settled in the States, and were broken up by the fugitive slave law,—compelled to leave our home and friends, and to go at later than middle life into a foreign country among strangers.
I look upon slavery as the worst evil that ever was. My life has been taken from me in a measure by it. If any are disposed to apologize for slavery, it would be well for them to try it awhile.