The conflict on this particular occasion had arisen between master and slave because George had asked the privilege of visiting a young quadroon of the plantation on whom Jones had fastened his lecherous eyes. As usual the controversy ended in the young man’s being bound to a post by some of the hands and then inhumanly flogged by his owner. Stung to madness, when all were settled for the night, he left his quarters and sought the cabin of his mother, and there, as we have seen, divulged his determination to seek a land of freedom. True to his purpose, when he had gained his mother’s consent, he went down to the river and unloosing a skiff floated down with the current some distance and then landing, struck boldly across to a neighboring swamp. Entering this, he passed on a short distance until he came to a small creek which led directly to the river. He now divested himself of his clothing which he safely placed upon his shoulders, and following the cove soon reached the river into which he plunged, and being an expert swimmer, was soon on the home side again, and making his way quietly to his mother’s cabin, where he was safely secreted beneath what he had augured an impregnable citadel, her bed.
HANNAH PRAYING.
Morning came soon, and the hands sallied from their quarters but with them came no George Gray. The word spread rapidly and soon reached both the cabin of Prayin’ Hanner and the mansion that he was missing. As soon as the proprietor could dress himself and make proper inquiries, he hastened to the shanty of the mother whom he found at her morning devotions, having begun them just as she saw his approach. Not wishing to disturb her he stopped before the door and caught these words of invocation:
“Bressed Lor’, dey say my poah, dear chile am gone. Am he drown? may de Lor’ raise de body up dat dis ole black form may follow in its sorrow to de grabe. Hab he killed hisself? may de Lor’ hab mercy on his soul, for Geog’ was a bad boy; he made mas’r heaps o’ trouble. O Lor’, if he hab runned away, may mas’r cotch him agin—not de houn’, but mas’r an’ de men, an’ den when mas’r Jones whip him, may de bressed Lor’ sen’ down ole Lija, an’ ’vert his soul, dat he no moah disrember mas’r but dat he do his will for his ole mudder’s sake, an’ for de sake ob his good mas’r, an’ for de sake ob dat heben whar de Lor’ is. Dis, Lor’, am de prayer of poah ole Hanner, amen.”
The prayer ceased and the master entered, only to find, as he inferred from it, that the intelligence of George’s departure had preceded him, and farther that the boy had been in there the night before and acted very strangely; that the mother had advised him to go to his quarters and be a good boy.
Leaving the woman to her work, he went out and gave orders for a search. Soon it was discovered that the skiff was gone and directly after it was found half a mile down the river with footsteps leading towards the swamp. A pack of hounds belonging on a plantation below was sent for and search begun in earnest, and kept up unceasingly for three days but without success, and then the hands were called in. In the meantime there appeared in the Lynchburg Herald the following:
$500.00 Reward.
“Run Away from the subscriber, George Gray, a negro, nearly pure, about twenty-one years old, and weighing one-hundred and fifty pounds. He talks pretty good English. Five hundred dollars will be given for him alive.” Samuel Jones.