Ann Mountain arrived from Delaware with her child about the same time that John did, but not in company with him; they met at the station in Philadelphia. That Slavery had crippled her in every respect was very discernible; this poor woman had suffered from cuffing, etc., until she could no longer endure her oppression. Taking her child in her arms, she sought refuge beyond the borders of slave territory. Ann was about twenty-two years of age, her child not quite a year old. They were considered entitled to much pity.
William was forty-one years of age, dark, ordinary size, and intelligent. He fled from Richmond, where he had been held by Alexander Royster, the owner of fifteen slaves, and a tobacco merchant. William said that his master was a man of very savage temper, short, and crabbed. As to his social relations, William said that he was "a member of nothing now but a liquor barrel."
Knowing that his master and mistress labored under the delusion that he was silly enough to look up to them as kind-hearted slave-holders, to whom he should feel himself indebted for everything, William thought that they would be sadly puzzled to conjecture what had become of him. He was sure that they would be slow to believe that he had gone to Canada. Until within the last five years he had enjoyed many privileges as a slave, but he had since found it not so easy to submit to the requirements of Slavery. He left his wife, Nancy, and two children.
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ARRIVAL FROM BALTIMORE, 1858.
ROBERTA TAYLOR.
The subject of this sketch was a young mulatto woman, twenty-three years of age, who fled from the City of Baltimore. Both before and after her escape Roberta appeared to appreciate her situation most fully. Her language concerning freedom had in it the ring of common sense, as had her remarks touching her slave life.
In making her grievances known to the Committee she charged Mr. and Mrs. McCoy with having done great violence to her freedom and degrading her womanhood by holding her in bonds contrary to her wishes. Of Mr. McCoy, however, she spoke less severely than she did of his "better half." Indeed she spoke of some kind traits in his character, but said that his wife was one of "the torn down, devilish dispositions, all the time quarreling and fighting, and would swear like an old sailor." It was in consequence of these evil propensities that her ladyship was intolerable to Roberta. Without being indebted to her owners for any privileges, she had managed to learn to read a little, which knowledge she valued highly and meant to improve in Canada.
Roberta professed to be a Christian, and was a member of the Bethel Methodist Church. Her servitude, until within four years of her escape, had been passed in Virginia, under Mrs. McCoy's father, when to accommodate the daughter she was transferred to Baltimore. Of her parentage or relatives no note was made on the book. It was sad to see such persons destitute and homeless, compelled to seek refuge among strangers, not daring to ask the slightest favor, sympathy or prayer to aid her, Christian as she was, from any Christian of Baltimore, wearing a fair skin.