A Slave Girl's Story: Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold.Drumgoold, Kate
Religion
A Slave Girl's Story: Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold.
Drumgoold, Kate
Drumgoold, Kate; Enslaved persons -- United States -- Biography
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 on Sunday morning
and sent me to Sunday-school in the afternoon with their children, and
what a heaven it seemed to me from the place where I was living at
first.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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