trong ground of complaint. Not
long before escaping, she had been threatened with the auction-block;
this fate she felt bound to avert, if possible, and the way she aimed to
do it was by escaping on the Underground Rail Road. Charley, a bright
little fellow only three years of age, was "contented and happy" enough.
Lucinda left her father, Moses Edgar Wright, and two brothers, both
slaves. One belonged to "Francis Crookshanks," and the other to Capt.
Jim Mitchell. Her mother, who was known by the name of Betsy Wright,
escaped when she (Lucinda) was seven years of age. Of her whereabouts
nothing further had ever been heard. Lucinda entertained strong hopes
that she might find her in Canada.

Charles Henry Gross began life in Maryland, and was made to bear the
heat and burden of the day in Baltimore, under Henry Slaughter,
proprietor of the Ariel Steamer. Owing to hard treatment, Charles was
induced to fly to Canada for refuge.

A woman with two children, one in her arms, and the other two years of
age (names, etc., not recorded), came from the District of Columbia.
Mother and children, appealed loudly for sympathy.

John Brown, being at the beck of a man filling the situation of a common
clerk (in the shoe store of McGrunders), became dissatisfied. Asking
himself what right Benjamin Thorn (his professed master) had to his
hire, he was led to see the injustice of his master, and made up his
mind, that he would leave by the first train, if he could get a genuine
ticket _via_ the Underground Rail Road. He found an agent and soon had
matters all fixed. He left his father, mother and seven sisters and one
brother, all slaves. John was a man small of stature, dark, with homely
features, but he was very determined to get away from oppression.

John and Lamby Roach had been eating bitter bread under bondage near
Seaford. John was the so-called property of Joshua O'Bear, "a fractious,
hard-swearing man, and when mad would hit one of his slaves with
anything he could get in his hands." John and his companion made the
long journey on foot. The former had been trained to farm labor and the
common drudgery of slave life. Being a man of thirty-three years of age,
with more than ordinary abilities, he had given the matter of his
bondage considerable thought, and seeing that his master "got worse the
older he got," together with the fact, that his wife had recently been
sold, he was strongly stirred to make an effort