My master owned about four hundred acres of good land, and had had ten
slaves. Most of the slaves stayed at home. My master hired me to work
for him. He gave my mother forty acres of land with a cabin on it and
sold me a forty acres, for twenty dollars, when I could pay him. This
was timbered land and had lots of good trees for lumber, especially
walnut. One tree on this ground was worth one hundred dollars, if I
could only get it cut and marketed, I could pay for my land. My master's
wife had been dead for several years and they had no children. The
nearest relative being a nephew. They wanted my master's land and was
afraid he would give it all away to us slaves, so they killed him, and
would have killed us if we had stayed at home. I took my mother and ran
into the adjoining, Claire County. We settled there and stayed for
sometime, but I wanted to see Kansas, the State I had heard so much
about."
"I couldn't get nobody to go with me, so I started out afoot across the
prairies for Kansas. After I got some distance from home it was all
prairie. I had to walk all day long following buffalo trail. At night I
would go off a little ways from the trail and lay down and sleep. In the
morning I'd wake up and could see nothing but the sun and prairie. Not a
house, not a tree, no living thing, not even could I hear a bird. I had
little to eat, I had a little bread in my pocket.
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