mas. I am happy with all the comforts of a poor person not dependant on
any one else for tomorrow".

Maryland
Dec. 13, 1937
Rogers

PAGE HARRIS, Ex-slave.
Reference: Personal interview with Page Harris at his home,
Camp Parole, A.A.C. Co., Md.

"I was born in 1858 about 3 miles west of Chicamuxen near the Potomac
River in Charles County on the farm of Burton Stafford, better known as
Blood Hound Manor. This name was applied because Mr. Stafford raised and
trained blood hounds to track runaway slaves and to sell to slaveholders
of Maryland, Virginia and other southern states as far south as
Mississippi and Louisiana.

"My father's name was Sam and mother's Mary, both of whom belonged to
the Staffords and were reared in Charles County. They reared a family of
nine children, I being the oldest and the only one born a slave, the
rest free. I think it was in 1859 or it might be 1860 when the Staffords
liberated my parents, not because he believed in the freedom of slaves
but because of saving the lives of his entire family.

"Mrs. Stafford came from Prince William County, Virginia, a county on
the west side of the Potomac River in Virginia. Mr. and Mrs. Stafford
had a large rowboat that they used on the Potomac as a fishing and
oyster boat as well as a transportation boat across the Potomac River to
Quantico, a small town in Prince William County, Va., and up Quantico
Creek in the same county.

"I have been told by my parents and also by Joshua Stafford, the oldest
son of Mr. Stafford, that one Sunday morning on the date as related in
the story previously Mrs. Stafford and her 3 children were being rowed
across the Potomac River to attend a Baptist church in Virginia of which
she was a member. Suddenly a wind and a thunder storm arose causing the
boat to capsize. My father was fishing from a log raft in the river,
immediately went to their rescue. The wind blew the raft towards the
centre of the stream and in line with the boat. He was able without
assistance to save the whole family, diving into the river to rescue
Mrs. Stafford after she had gone down. He pulled her on the raft and it
was blown ashore with all aboard, but several miles down the stream.
Everybody thought that the Staffords had been drowned as the boat
floated to the shore, bottom upwards.

"As a reward Mr. Stafford took my father to the court house at La Plata,
the county seat of Charles County, signed papers for the emancipatio