A Woman's Life-Work — Labors and Experiences of Laura S. HavilandHaviland, Laura S. (Laura Smith)
Religion
A Woman's Life-Work — Labors and Experiences of Laura S. Haviland
Haviland, Laura S. (Laura Smith)
Freed persons; Haviland, Laura S. (Laura Smith), 1808-1898; Underground Railroad
As the farm was still carried on by my married children, I concluded to
return to Cincinnati and engage in nursing the sick during the cold
season, as the cough to which I was subject was returning. All things
considered, the conclusion was reached to suspend Raisin Institute one
year at least. An Oberlin scholarship was presented me for my daughter
Laura Jane, who decided to take a gentleman's collegiate course. Not
only my financial pressure seemed to direct toward that more southern
field, but the cause of those who were thirsting for liberty, and were
almost daily leaving boats or crossing the river, was also a strong
incentive to occupy a post near the Southern end of the road whose
Northern terminus was in Queen Victoria's dominions.
Many of my friends thought me presuming to venture so near those who
had threatened my life repeatedly, and in the hand-bills of the
Tennesseans (report said) there was offered $3,000 reward for my head.
Thomas K. Chester stated in a letter that he had sent them to a number
of the Southern States, to let them know what sort of sisters they had
in the North. But J. F. Dolbeare, on the night before his death, called
me to his bedside, and, taking my hand in his, said, "Sister Haviland,
you have passed through close and trying places in your work, and your
anti-slavery mission is not yet finished. Your trials are not over.
Greater dangers are for you to pass through--I see it. O, may the Lord
prepare you for the work he has for you to accomplish! He has sustained
you thus far. He will grant you his protecting arm. I know it." I have
often had occasion to remember the words I listened to in that solemn
hour, during thirty years that have since passed.
A slave-owner from New Orleans, with his wife, three children, and
their nurse, Maria, were bound for Cincinnati. When at Louisville, he
was told if he was going to spend the Summer in Cincinnati he'd be sure
to lose his servant-girl, "as that city is cursed with free negroes and
abolitionists." At this unpleasant information, Champlin and his wife
concluded to make their temporary home in Covington, instead of
Cincinnati, to the great disappointment of Maria, as she and her
husband had been over two years in saving all their little silver
pieces, until the amount was one hundred dollars, which was to be used
in taking her to Canada.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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