As
nearly as I have been able to learn, I was born near a crossroads
post-office called Hale's Ford and the year was 1858 or 1859. I do not
know the month or the day. The earliest impressions I can now recall
are of the plantation and the slave quarters, the latter being the part
of the plantation where the slaves had their cabins.
My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate,
and discouraging surroundings. This was so, however, not because my
owners were especially cruel, for they were not, as compared with many
others. I was born in a typical log-cabin, about fourteen by sixteen
feet square. In this cabin I lived with my mother and a brother and
sister till after the Civil War, when we were all declared free.
Of my ancestry I know almost nothing. In the slave quarters, and even
later, I heard whispered conversations among the coloured people of the
tortures which the slaves, including, no doubt, my ancestors on my
mother's side, suffered in the middle passage of the slaveship while
being conveyed from Africa to America. I have been unsuccessful in
securing any information that would throw any accurate light upon the
history of my family, beyond my mother.
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