Still, William, Underground Rail Road:
A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, Etc.

Porter & Coales, Publishers, Philadelphia, PA, 1872
Call Number: 1400, MSA L1117

MSA L1117, Image No: 350   Enlarge and print image (51K)

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Still, William, Underground Rail Road:
A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, Etc.

Porter & Coales, Publishers, Philadelphia, PA, 1872
Call Number: 1400, MSA L1117

MSA L1117, Image No: 350   Enlarge and print image (51K)

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  << PREVIOUS   NEXT >>
328 THE UNDERGROUND RAIL ROAD. P. S.—I do not know if I shall go this Fall, or in the Spring. It will depend upon the letter I receive from California, but whichever it may be, I shall be happy to hear from you v»ry soon. ISAIAH, who was a fellow-servant with Rebecca, and was included in the reward offered by Hall for Rebecca, etc., was a young man about twenty-three years of age, a mulatto, intelligent and of prepossessing manners. A purely ardent thirst for liberty prompted him to flee; although he declared that he had been treated very badly, and had even suffered severely from being shamefully " beaten.'1 He had, however, been permitted to hire his time by the year, for which one hundred and twenty dollars were regularly demanded by his owner. Young as he was, ho was a married man, with a wife and two children, to whom lie was devoted. He had besides two brothers and two sisters for whom he felt a warm degree of brotherly afi'ection; yet when the hour arrived for him to accept a chance for freedom at the apparent sacrifice of these dearest ties of kindred, he was found heroic enough for this painful ordeal, and to give up all for freedom. CAROLINE TAYLOR, and her two little children, were also from Norfolk, and came by boat. Upon the whole, they were not less interesting than Rebecca Jones and her three little girls. Although Caroline was not in her person half so stately, nor gave such promise of heroism as Rebecca—for Caroline was ratlier small of stature—yet she was more refined, and quite as intelligent as Rebecca, and represented considerably more of the Anglo-Saxon blood. She was a mulatto, and her children were almost fair enough to pass for white—probably they were quadroons, hardly any one would have suspected that they had only one quarter of colored blood in their veins. For ten years Caroline had been in the habit of hiring her time at the rate of seventy-five dollars per year, with the exception of the last year, when her hire was raised to eighty-four dollars. So anxious was she to have her older girl (eleven years old) at home with her, that she also hired her time by the year, for which she was compelled to pay twenty-four dollars. As her younger child was not sufficiently grown to hire out for pay, she was permitted to have it at home with her on the conditions that she would feed, clothe and take good care of it, permitting no expense whatever to fall upon the master. Judging from the appearance and manners of the children, their mother had, doubtless, been most faithful to them, for more handsome, well-behaved, intelligent and pleasing children could not easily be selected from either race or any station of life. The younger, Mary by name, nine years of age, attrneted very great attention, by the deep interest she manifested in a poor fugitive (whom she had never seen before), at the Philadelphia station, confined to the bed and suffering excruciating pain from wounds he had» received whilst escaping. Hours and hours together, during the two or three clajs of their sojourn, she spent of her own accord, by his bed-sidey