[515] _Liberator_, Aug. 15, 1845, "The Branded Hand," quoted in part by Wilson, _History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America_, Vol. II, p. 83; Whittier's _Poetical Works_, Vol. III, Riverside edition, 1896, p. 114. [516] Reminiscences written by George W. Clark, by request, have been used to secure an intimate acquaintance with some of the men engaged in the underground service. About 1847, Mrs. Laura S. Haviland accepted a mission to find the family of one John White, a slave, who had escaped from the South and was serving as a farm-hand in the neighborhood of Mrs. Haviland's school in southeastern Michigan. Mrs. Haviland went to Cincinnati where she consulted with the Vigilance Committee, and thence to Rising Sun, Indiana, to secure the services of several of John White's colored friends. Here a plan was formed for Mrs. Haviland to go into Kentucky to the plantation where the family lived, and, disguised as a berry picker, see the wife, inform her of her husband's whereabouts, and offer to assist in her rescue. Accomplishing this errand and returning across the border into Indiana, Mrs. Haviland awaited the slave-woman's appearance; but her escape had been prevented by the vigilance evoked on account of the operations of counterfeiters in Kentucky. Then John White started South intent on saving his wife and children from slavery, but his efforts also were unsuccessful, and he was thrown into a Kentucky jail. However, he was soon released by Laura Haviland, who purchased him for three hundred and fifty dollars.[517] [517] Laura S. Haviland, _A Woman's Life Work_, pp. 91-110. In the summer of 1847, Captain Daniel Drayton sailed to Washington with a cargo of oysters, and while his boat was lying at the wharf he was cautiously approached by a negro, who wanted to get passage North for a woman and five children. The negro said the woman was a slave but that she had, under an agreement with her master, more than paid for her liberty, and when she asked for her "free papers" the master only answered by threatening to sell her South.[518] Captain Drayton allowed the woman and her children and a niece to stow themselves on board his vessel, and he soon landed them at Frenchtown, to the great joy of the woman's husband, who was awaiting them there. [518] _Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton_, 1853, p. 23.