Produced by Skip Doughty, Tom Allen, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. A WOMAN'S LIFE-WORK: LABORS AND EXPERIENCES OF LAURA S. HAVILAND. DEDICATION to My two sons, and four daughters, and families; also to the Home and Foreign Missionary Society, are these pages dedicated. The Author PREFACE. In presenting the following pages to the public, without the trace of an excellent scholar or eloquent orator, I fully realize my inability to compete with writers of the nineteenth century. With this incompetency in view, I have hesitated and delayed until three-score and thirteen years are closing over me. Yet as I am still spared to toil on a little longer in the great field so white to harvest, praying the Lord of the harvest to arm and send forth more laborers, because they are too few, I ask an indulgent public to allow my deep and abiding sympathies for the oppressed and sorrowing of every nation, class, or color, to plead my excuse for sending forth simple, unvarnished facts and experiences, hoping they may increase an aspiration for the active doing, instead of saying what ought to be done, with excusing self for want of ability, when it is to be found in Him who is saying, "My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is perfect in weakness." LAURA S. HAVILAND. OCTOBER, 1881. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. EARLY LIFE. Parentage--Early Impressions--Childhood Skepticism--Religious Experience--The Great Leveler--Marriage--Removal to Michigan--The Semi-Christian--The Despairing Backslider Restored--Proscription--Withdrawal from the Society of Friends--Founded "Raisin Institute," CHAPTER II. BEREAVEMENTS. Dream--Bereavements--Early Widowhood--Trials--Dreamy--Victory by Faith--A Fugitive Slave Escapes--Marriage of two Older Children, CHAPTER III. ANTI-SLAVERY EXPERIENCES. Baptist Deacon Convicted of the Sin of Slavery by his Slave--Willis Hamilton's Escape with his Slave-wife, Elsie, to Canada--Removal to Michigan--Whereabouts Discovered by Elsie's Master--Deeply Laid Scheme to Capture the Hamilton Family--Threats of Violence--Second Attempt and Defeat--Death of the two Slave-holders, CHAPTER IV. AN OHIO SCHOOL-TEACHER. A Traveling Agent--Slave Claimant--John White--Threats--Visit to Jane White--Interview with William Allen--Escape of Slaves--In Suspense--Death of First-born--Comforting Dream--John White a Prisoner--His Release and Subsequent History, CHAPTER V. THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY. Two Slave Families Escape--Story of George and James--A Mother and Daughter Leave a Boat bound for the Lower Market--Sarah and two Young Men join our Party--Seven are Conducted to Canada--Raisin Institute Suspended for an Academic Year--Return to Cincinnati--Maria--Threats of her Master--The Escape of two Young Men CHAPTER VI. FUGITIVE SLAVES ASSISTED.