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: 421   Enlarge and print image (41K)

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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: 421   Enlarge and print image (41K)

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ARRIVAL FROM DELAWARE, 1857. JOHX WEIGHT AJJD WIFE, ELIZABETH AKN, AHD CHARLES COSNOB. This party arrived from Sussex county. John was about thirty years of age, ordinary size, full black and clear-headed. In physical appearance lie \vould have readily passed for a superior laborer. The keenness of his eyes and quick neas of his perception, however, would doubtless have rendered him an object of suspicion in some parts of the South. The truth was that the love of liberty was clearly indicated in his expressive countenance. William S. Phillips, a farmer, had been " sucking" John's blood, and keeping him poor and ignorant for the last eight years at least; before that, Phillips' father had defrauded him of his hire. Under the father and sou John had found plenty of hard work and bad usage, severe and repeated floggings not exccpted. Old master and mistress and young master and mistress, including the entire family, belonged to what was known as the " Farmer church," at Portsville. Outwardly they were good Christians. " Occasionally," John said, " the old man would have family prayers," and to use John's own words, " in company he would try to moralize, but out of company was as great a rowdy as ever was." In further describing his old master, he said that lie was a large man, with a reel face and blunt nose, and was very quick and fiery in his temper; would drink and swear—aud even his wife, with all Lands, would have to run when he was " raised." Of his young master he said : " He was quite a long-bodied, thin-faced man, weighing over one hundred and fifty pounds. In temper just like his father, though he did not drink—that is all the good quality that I can recommend in him." John said also that his master, on one occasion, in a most terribly angry mood, threatened that lie would "wade up to his knees in his (John's) blood." It so happened that John's blood was up pretty high just at that time; he gave his master to understand that he would rather go South (be sold) than submit to the scourging wliich was imminent. John's pluck probably had the effect of allaying the master's fire ; at any rate the storm subsided after awhile, and until the day that he took the Underground Rail Road car the servant managed to put tip with his master. As John's wife was on the eve of l>eing sold he was prompted to leave some time sooner than he otherwise would have done.