Leonard A. Grimes is a native of Leesburg, Loudon county, Va., and was born in 1815. He went to Washington when a boy, and was first employed in a butcher's shop, and afterwards in an apothecary's establishment. He subsequently hired himself out to a slaveholder, whose confidence he soon gained. Accompanying his employer in some of his travels in the remote Southern States, young Grimes had an opportunity of seeing the different phases of slave life; and its cruelty created in his mind an early hatred to the institution which has never abated. He could not resist the appeals of the bondmen for aid in making their escape to a land of freedom, and consequently was among the first to take stock in the Underground Railroad. After saving money enough by his earnings, he purchased a hack and horses, and became a hackman in the city of Washington. In his new vocation, Mr. Grimes met with success, and increased his business until he was the owner of a number of carriages and horses, and was considered one of the foremost men in his line. During all this time he never lost sight of the slave, and there is no telling how many he put on the road to Canada. A poor woman and her seven children were about being carried away to the far south by the slave-trader. Her husband, a free black, sought out Leonard A. Grimes, and appealed to his humanity, and not in vain; for in less than forty-eight hours, the hackman penetrated thirty miles into Virginia, and, under cover of night, brought out the family. The husband, wife, and little ones, a few days after, breathed the free air of Canada. Mr. Grimes was soon suspected, arrested, tried, and sentenced to two years in the state prison, at Richmond. Here he remained; and the close, dank, air, the gloom, the high, dull, cold, stone walls, the heavy fetters upon his limbs, the entire lack of any thing external to distract his thoughts from his situation, all together, produced a feeling of depression he had never known before. It was at this time that Mr. Grimes "felt," as he says, "that great spiritual change which makes all things new for the soul." From that hour he became a preacher to his keepers, and, as far as he was allowed, to his fellow-prisoners. This change lightened his confinement, and caused him to feel that he was sent there to do his Master's will.