![]() I availed myself of every opportunity, daily I carried my book in my pocket, and every chance that offered would be learning my A, B, C's. They did not know that it was dangerous for a slave to read and write. I sought the aid of the white boys, who did all they could in teaching me. I had heard so much about freedom, and of the colored people running off and going to Canada, that my mind was busy with this subject even in my young days. Would be something for me to do in the future that I could not accomplish by remaining in ignorance. Very early in life I took up the idea that I wanted to learn to read and write. He was always my friend when I thought trouble was in the air he was my only refuge when he failed to plead for me my hopes fled. I would blush to tell the cause of that whipping in this book, but it was a good one. I only got one whipping from father, and that I richly deserved. My mother always told me what she was going to whip me for before commencing, and would talk to me while she was whipping me. Many a poor mother has been whipped nearly to death on account of their children telling the white children things, who would then go and tell their mothers or fathers. Mothers were necessarily compelled to be severe on their children to keep them from talking too much. She would wait till I had undressed, and then attended to her loving boy as she used to call me. She used to whip me nearly every night for the misdemeanors of the day. I was a cow-boy in the meantime, and for six successive years I, with my mother, attended to the dairy. Our master was not hard on us, and allowed us generally to do as we pleased after his own work was done, and we enjoyed the privilege granted to us. This we knew, hence we would lash our horses from morning until night,Īnd get through sometimes by the middle of the week, and would then spend the remainder of the week in roving and roaming up and down the creek, fishing, etc. We boys, in the time of plowing, as a general thing, only had the corn to plow over once a week. It was a source of pleasure for me to leave the house and go to the field, where I could skip, hop, and jump to my heart's delight. ![]() ![]() I could tell of many romances of the field, but this little book will not allow it. I left the dining-room and went to the corn-field. The white boys used to make trades with the colored boys for instance, I would have a marble he wanted he would say to me, “I will give you a seldom for that marble.” He meant that he would give me a biscuit with butter on it that he would save a portion of what he was to eat to pay his debt. In those days the colored people hardly knew the taste of wheat bread. I remember how Brother Henry and I used to steal the biscuits off the plates while carrying them into the dining-room, and how they would burn us while hot in our pockets. After I became seven or eight years old I was made a dining-room boy. We would get a flogging when we returned, but the next day we would be gone again. We had the dog-fennel for our hiding-place, and often the whole family would be in an uproar to know where we were. White boys and colored boys would leave home soon in the morning and rove the woods through during the summer time. I remember, when I was but four years old, how I used to steal away from home and stay until the dark would drive me in. ![]() On the farm where I was reared there were about thirty slaves. My father was a free man my mother was a slave, hence I was born a slave. ![]() My mother belonged to a man by the name of Jesse Robinson. My father, who is yet living, is seventy-five years old. I am unable to tell when my mother was born but, I think, about the year 1815. I WAS born January, 1840, in Shelby County, Kentucky, twenty miles east of the city of Louisville and my parents, Andrew and Frances Marrs, were born in Culpepper County, Virginia. ![]()
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