in this dull, flat, and unthrifty district, or neighborhood,
surrounded by a white population of the lowest order, indolent and
drunken to a proverb, and among slaves, who seemed to ask, _"Oh! what's
the use?"_ every time they lifted a hoe, that I--without any fault of
mine was born, and spent the first years of my childhood.

The reader will pardon so much about the place of my birth, on the score
that it is always a fact of some importance to know where a man is born,
if, indeed, it be important to know anything about him. In regard to the
_time_ of my birth, I cannot be as definite as I have been respecting
the _place_. Nor, indeed, can I impart much knowledge concerning my
parents. Genealogical trees do not flourish among slaves. A person of
some consequence here in the north, sometimes designated _father_, is
literally abolished in slave law and slave practice. It is only once in
a while that an exception is found to this statement. I never met with a
slave who could tell me how old he was. Few slave-mothers know anything
of the months of the year, nor of the days of the month. They keep no
family records, with marriages, births, and deaths. They measure the
ages of their children by spring time, winter time, harvest time,
planting time, and the like; but these soon become undistinguishable
and forgotten. Like other slaves, I cannot tell how old I am. This
destitution was among my earliest troubles. I learned when I grew up,
that my master--and this is the case with masters generally--allowed
no questions to be put to him, by which a slave might learn his{27
GRANDPARENTS} age. Such questions deemed evidence of impatience, and
even of impudent curiosity. From certain events, however, the dates of
which I have since learned, I suppose myself to have been born about the
year 1817.

The first experience of life with me that I now remember--and I remember
it but hazily--began in the family of my grandmother and grandfather.
Betsey and Isaac Baily. They were quite advanced in life, and had long
lived on the spot where they then resided. They were considered old
settlers in the neighborhood, and, from certain circumstances, I infer
that my grandmother, especially, was held in high esteem, far higher
than is the lot of most colored persons in the slave states. She was
a good nurse, and a capital hand at making nets for catching shad and
herring; and these nets were in great demand, not only in Tuckahoe, but
at Denton and