REV. ALFRED CONNETT, McLEANSVILLE.
We hear almost daily of young men and young women who would come here to school if they could only get a room where they could “batch.” I can only hear of one vacant house within two miles of the school, and that is engaged by two students who have not yet returned. Small buildings, say 12×20, one story, two rooms, can be built for about $100 each, and land bought at $6 to $10 per acre, possibly $20 for small tracts. By making some provision of this kind to accommodate students, we should at once draw in ten to twenty students, and these the very ones we most need to reach: namely, those who are preparing to teach, and to preach. Thus, the school would become more widely and more permanently useful. These buildings are needed immediately, or part of them. It is difficult, if not impossible, with their limited means, for the students to obtain board, with suitable accommodations. The white people do not wish to take in boarders, unless at high figures, and the colored people have, usually, but one room in their log houses.
Cannot some church, individual, or individuals, do a work for Christ in this way? If this, or something similar is not done, we shall let an important and precious opportunity slip through our fingers.
TALLADEGA, ALABAMA.
The Story of Ambrose Headen,
AS TOLD BY HIMSELF.
I am fifty-six years old; was born in Chatham Co., N. C.; was a slave forty-three years, sixteen years in North Carolina and twenty seven in Alabama. I have lived in this county forty years. My young master in North Carolina was four years older than myself; he had nine slaves, and I was the only male. He died just before I was sixteen. When I was thirteen I went to learn the carpenter’s trade. I was taken from my mother and sent away to nurse children when I was six. I served three years at the carpenter’s bench and at that time my master died, and I had to be sold to pay his debts.
On the day appointed for the sale I went fourteen miles on foot, and alone, to the place where I was to be sold. On my way I tried to lay some plan to run away. A white woman said she would help me, and told me to go into a certain swamp and she would feed me and help me away, but I was afraid of the dogs and the men that would catch me. No one can tell my feelings on my way to the sale, but I knew I had to go. At the place of sale were 500 people come together to see me sold, and to buy me. I was the only one to be sold. I was on the block three hours while the men were bidding for me. Five of these men were speculators, and the rest were mostly people that lived in that region. While they were selling me there was a good deal of brandy drunk, and they offered me some as I was very tired standing; and I said, “No, sir, I have sorrow enough on me now without drinking that.” I was finally knocked off to a very bad man for $1,780. This man lived about thirteen miles from my old home, and when I knew that he was my master I burst into tears, heart-broken. The overseer took me behind the store and tried to stop me from crying, but I could not stop. At last, my new master said if any one would give for me as much as he had, he might have me, and a man from Alabama, who was out to North Carolina on a visit, said he would, and so I sold again to this man from Alabama, and after three months I was taken away from all my friends away down to Alabama. My new master proved to be a good man, a member of the Baptist Church, and I lived with him twenty-seven years until emancipation. One thing I forgot to tell you, and it made a deep impression on my mind: at the time I was being sold in North Carolina, a man in the crowd cried out with a loud voice, “Hell will boil and overflow at such work as this.” I never can forget that expression.
I was set free by two wills; the first one was burned, and so I was kept in slavery. Once, after I had been absent from home some time, my mistress, on my return, came rushing out to the gate and crying with a loud voice, “Oh, Ambrose, Ambrose! I had rather live in the smokiest cabin on the place, and had your master’s will done, than to be in the king’s palace,” but the will was burned and so it could not be done. The other will that set me free was made ten years before emancipation; but emancipation came before my master died, and so his will did me no good.