ces we
went was the wharf. One day in June and on a Saturday a large boat was
at the wharf going north on the Mississippi River. We children were
there. Somehow, I was separated from the other children. I was taken up
bodily by a white man, carried on the boat, put in a cabin and kept
there until we got to Louisville, Kentucky, where I was taken off.

"After I arrived in Louisville I was taken to a farm near Frankfort and
installed there virturally a slave until 1864, when I escaped through
the kindness of a delightful Episcopalian woman from Cincinnati, Ohio.
As I could not speak English, my chores were to act as a tutor and
companion for the children of Pierce Buckran Haynes, a well known slave
trader and plantation owner in Kentucky. Haynes wanted his children to
speak French and it was my duty to teach them. I was the private
companion of 3 girls and one small boy, each day I had to talk French
and write French for them. They became very proficient in French and I
in the rudiments of the English language.

"I slept in the children's quarters with the Haynes' children, ate and
played with them. I had all the privileges of the household accorded me
with the exception of one, I never was taken off nor permitted to leave
the plantation. While on the plantation I wore good clothes, similar to
those of the white children. Haynes was a merciless brutal tyrant with
his slaves, punishing them severly and cruelly both by the lash and in
the jail on the plantation.

"The name of the plantation where I was held as a slave was called
Beatrice Manor, after the wife of Haynes. It contained 8000 acres, of
which more than 6000 acres were under cultivation, and having about 350
colored slaves and 5 or 6 overseers all of whom were white. The
overseers were the overlords of the manor; as Haynes dealt extensively
in tobacco and trading in slaves, he was away from the plantation nearly
all the time. There was located on the top of the large tobacco
warehouse a large bell, which was rung at sun up, twelve o'clock and at
sundown, the year round. On the farm the slaves were assigned a task to
do each day and In the event it was not finished they were severely
whipped. While I never saw a slave whipped, I did see them afterwards,
they were very badly marked and striped by the overseers who did the
whipping.

"I have been back to the farm on several occasions, the first time in
1872 when I took my father there to show him the farm. At tha