A Slave Girls Story | Page 3

a servant, for she did not like that, but I was there as her
loving child for her to care for me, and everything that I wanted I had;
truly do I feel grateful to my Heavenly Father for all of those blessings
that came to me in the time that I needed so much of love and care.
This dear lady, Mrs. Bettie House, my white mother, died at the
beginning of the war and then the time came for poor me to go to my
own dear mother again for awhile, and soon the time came for us to be
parted asunder, where we did not see one another any more until after
the war of 1865. And we all thought that mother was dead, for we did
not hear any tidings of her after she had reached the far South.
I shall never forget that lovely Sunday morning when I saw my dear
mother returning again to her own native home and her own dear ones
once more, but mother would not go to the house with us, as she did
not want to take the law in her own hands. So she told sister and I
where she was stopping and told us to come to her after we had told the
gentleman where we lived, and I went to him and told him that mother
had come back and wanted to have us to come where she was staying.
He, Mr. House, did not want us to go, and I took my oldest sister and
marched out to go where mother was and he did not like that freedom,
and he tried to find which way that we had gone to the place, but he did
not find us, and we had been to the place where the people were that

had homes, and that they would kill us at first sight, and that was all
that I wanted to see, and I did not find one thing true of their sayings.
Mother now has to tell the gentleman where to find all of her own dear
ones whom God in His love for had kept for her, and she should have
been very grateful to Him that her life had been prolonged and all that
she had left alive were still alive, awaiting for her to return, and finding
that her children were all over in different places, and now she has to
tell where to find them, through the help of the Lord. And when she
had gone for them and was told that some of her own were dead, she
said that she would go and dig up their bones; but they were not dead,
as was said, and she sent the soldiers after them and sometimes they
were told the same as mother was, and some of the little ones had to be
sent for two or three times before they were brought. My oldest sister
knew where they all were, so she could help to get the rest.
One of my sisters who lived at the same place where we were living
was detained and the soldiers had go three times before they could get
her, for they said that she had died since we had left, for I would not
stay at the place as he, Mr. House, did not want us to go on Monday to
see my mother, on whom I should look to, as she had come to claim her
own. I told my oldest sister that we would leave, and my sister Annie
was at one of Mr. House's sons, who found that we were going to see
mother and she came with us, so that left three there yet; that was sister
Lavinia and the baby, sister Rosa, and they let mother have the baby, as
it was a sickly child; and she had to send there three times before she
could get sister Lavinia, and the last time the soldiers, with horses,
went, and the House's took off all of her clothing and put them into
water to keep them from taking her, and they had to take blankets and
wrap her in them, and bring her to mother, and she took sick from that
time from the long ride, and getting cold she nearly died.
One they hid in the garden; one they put in the cellar, and so these were
hard times for mother and us, who were in the road one night walking
to find some place to get out of the rain and let those wet garments get
dried, for it was so dark that we could not see a hand before us.
But after all the hard trials we reached this lovely city, where there are

those that love and