William S. Edwards

I was born in Springfield, Ohio. My mother was, to the best of my belief, a free-woman. While I was a little child, a man claimed my mother as a slave woman whom he had lost seven years before, and took both her and me into Kentucky,—as I have been told to Burlington. He took us to Louisville to sell us, and there ‘t was proved that she was not his, but another man’s slave; that other man took us back to Burlington. Here was another dispute, and another man examined, and found more marks than the other, and proved that she belonged to him. After passing through several hands she was sold, and I have not seen her since, nor do I know where she is. I have heard that when she was sold, it was left her, to take me with her into slavery, or remain there and be free. She chose to let me remain. I stayed with the family until, at thirteen, I was put to the trade of a tobacconist: remained until twenty-one. Then I did not dare to talk about freedom. I dared not name it,—I still stayed working at the business. After a while, hearing some talking about my rights, I questioned as closely as I could, but not to awaken distrust.

When I was about twenty-five, we had a dispute about a holiday, and then I first claimed my rights to his teeth, telling him that I was free. He said I must stay two years more. A man offered to lend me two hundred dollars, to buy my time: he refused. I then hired to another man, paying my claimant twenty dollars a month, for a year and five months.

I kept on inquiring, until I found the man who first carried me into Kentucky. He told me a very straight story,—that he had found the woman whom he had lost in New Orleans—she having been absent from him fifteen years and six months, having been in New Orleans all that time. I searched the records at the Recorder’s office, but there was nothing on the books,—the whole being a rascally scheme, therefore they took no account of it on the books. The clerk said there surely was no trial or transaction in the court; if there had been, it would have been on record. But the man who brought me said there was a trial; he acknowledged that neither me nor my mother ever belonged to him; that it was a mistake.

Another man went with me to search, but found no scratch of a pen from ten years back to forty. I then got a white man to go to the persons who pretended to own me, and he told me, in their presence, that if a man were half white and born free, he ought to be free; and you are all of that. My boss said that I would be free after a time—that he never meant to keep me over time. He probably meant my time as long as I lived,—as a master told his slave once, “When you die, I’ll give you your papers.” He said I could n’t pass without papers: he went with me, saying to get papers, and then he would not, but said I must stay a while longer before I could get them; that he could not give them to me just yet. Things went on in this way two or three months, until I was nearly twenty-seven years old. At length my mistress’s son, by her consent, gave me free papers. I went to Ohio: then came into Canada, and settled down in Chatham.

I have five children. One goes to school; we are not able to send all on account of the price partly, as we have to pay fifty cents a quarter for each child, at the public school. I went into Chatham with nothing, and I want the children some in the family.

I have seen many things practised in slavery which are too horrible to name.