A Slave Girls Story | Page 4

the people who do not forget us day or night in their prayers, that God will send a blessing to us as a race.
To my story of a life of slavery:
My dear mother had a dear husband that she was sold from also, and he, not knowing that he should ever see my mother any more, as the times were then, he waited for a while and then he found him another wife, and when mother came and found that he was married to another she tried to get him, but she could do nothing about it; so having to leave him behind to look after the last one and her family, although it seemed hard for her to do so.
My mother had a large family to take care of, but the Lord was good to her and helped her, for she had laid some of them away, and then there were ten little girls to care for. My brother was lost to us and to mother also, as he was sent to the war to do service for his owner, and we did not know if he was alive or not, and he was my mother's only boy, as this is a girl family that you do not see or hear of every day, for that made seventeen girls to have battle through life had they all have lived to this time.
CHAPTER II
My mother did not know where my brother was before she was sold, for we heard that he had tried to get over to the Northern side and had been taken to Richmond, Va., and put into Castle Thunder, and that was the last that we heard of him during the war. When, to our surprise, we were on our way North we learned that he was going to school; that the Northern people had teachers there in the South to teach them to read and to write; and he learning that we had gone North made himself ready and came on, but he did not know where to find us, so getting a place to work, and the same time telling those that he worked for that his people were here somewhere, they found mother and got her to go to the place where he was, and sure enough there was her dead and lost boy, and the joy and love that came to that dear, loving mother and her only son on that day will never be known on this side of the grave, as they have both gone to the land of the blest, for my brother never used any bad language in his life, and when he took the Lord for his own, it was his meat and his drink to live for Him and to follow where He led, and he died a true child of the King.
A few years later and mother's name was enrolled in the Lambs' Book of Life, for she gladly answered to the roll call and fell asleep in the arms of Jesus.
Well, my first place was in Adelphi street, with a family by the name of Hammond, and I was there to help do the work, and when they found that I liked to work so well they wanted me to do so much that I left that place and got me another, for I did not get out to church or to Sunday-school, and that was not the way that I had been trained, for when I was three years old my white mother had taken me to church with her on horseback.
Well, I said that I saw these children going to school on every week day but Saturdays and on Sundays to Sunday-school, and I there at work as if it were not the Lord's day, and I never shall like to work on that day as I was born on Sunday morning.
Well, I left there not knowing what to do, and a white lady took me in and told me to stay there until I could get another place, and I helped her girl on the next day to finish all of the work and I made ready to look for a place, and God did help me to find one and I shall never forget Him as long as I live, for that was with a fine family and they showed me love at once and I showed them love in return.
They were members of the Washington Avenue Baptist Church, and a more beloved family never lived. This was the Bailley family--Mr. and Mrs. Bailley, Miss Abbey Bailley, Mr. Bailley's sister, a young lady in her teens, Miss Ella Bailley, and a nice boy by the name of Johnny Bailley, and they were a nice family and they took me to church