A Woman's Life-Work — Labors and Experiences of Laura S. Haviland. Laura S. Haviland
"It's to do oder folks as you'd want 'em to do to you, or somehow dat fashion. I tell you, Massa John, 't would be mighty hard for you white folks to work great many years and get noffin'. Den, if you dies, whar'd we go to? I specks we'd go down de riber, like Jones's poor people did las' week."
"Well, well, Aunt Lucy, that was too bad; but Jones was in debt, and I suppose they had to be sold."
"O yes, I s'pose so; but dat you read in de Bible sort o' sticks to me—I can't help it," said this faithful old mother in Israel, as she went out to her work.
In a moment or two Mrs. Bayliss entered the room, and the deacon said:
"Wife, what kind of a text do you think Aunt Lucy has just given me?"
"Text?"
"Yes, text."
"What's got into her head now?"
"She says she's been thinking about what I read in prayer-time the other evening, referring to the golden rule, and that it sort o' sticks to her. She spoke, of the excitement over Jones's black people who were sent down the river the other day; and I tell you, the way she applied her text, it 'sort o' sticks' to me."
"O hush!" indignantly exclaimed Mrs. Bayliss. "Aunt Lucy's mighty religious, and has so many notions of her own she's not worth minding, any how."
"But she asked me what would become of my black people if I should die, and if I thought they would ever be torn apart as Jones's were. I tell you, wife, I have witnessed such scenes too often to feel right in risking a contingency of that kind," said the deacon, gravely.
"Don't be a fool, now, John Baybss," angrily exclaimed his wife, "about
Aunt Lucy's fuss over Jones's niggers."
"Well," said the deacon, "I don't wonder at her feeling grieved; they belonged to her Church, and many of them were her relatives."
Here, for the time being, the conversation ended; but the soul of John Bayliss, awakened by the simple, straight-forward speech of his bond-woman, refused to be quieted, and he made this the subject of earnest prayer until the path of duty became so clear before him that he could not do otherwise than manumit his twenty slaves, although bitterly opposed by his wife (who refused to free the three held in her own right).
Elsie, the wife of Willis Hamilton, belonged to a neighboring planter. She was sold to a drover for the Southern market, and was being torn from her husband and two little daughters. Willis, in his agony, went from house to house, imploring some one to buy her, so that she might remain near her family. Finally one Dr. John P. Chester, who was about opening a hotel, agreed to purchase Elsie for $800, if Willis would pay $300 in work in the house, and fare the same as the other servants in board and clothing. With these conditions Willis gladly complied; but after they had spent a few months in their new home Deacon Bayliss examined their article of agreement and found it to be illegal. He told Willis that Dr. Chester could sell Elsie at any time, and he could establish no claim to her, even had he paid the $300, which, at the wages he was receiving, would take him nearly nine years to earn, with the interest, and advised him to leave Dr. Chester and work for wages, as he had done since his manumission. This advice was immediately acted upon, Willis being permitted to spend his nights with his wife. Every thing passed off pleasantly for a few weeks, until one of the house-servants told Elsie that she overheard Master John sell both her and Willis to a slave-trader, who would the following night convey them to the river with a drove ready for New Orleans. Frantic as the poor woman was with terror and grief at this information, she managed to perform her duties as usual until supper-time; and when all were seated at the table she slipped out unobserved, ran through a corn-field into the woods, sending word to Willis by a fellow-servant to meet her at a certain log. The moment Willis received the message he hastened to her with flying feet; and here the wretched husband and wife, but a few days before so full of plans for a pleasant future, held their council in tears.
Willis, in his sudden fright and excitement, could only exclaim: "What shall we do? Where shall we go?" Elsie, cooler and more composed, suggested going to Deacon Bayliss for advice. This Willis quickly did, and soon returned, it having been arranged that he should bring Elsie there and secrete her in the attic until the excitement of the hunt was over. After this they assumed the names of Bill and Jane, a brother and sister who answered to their own description of color and size on Willia's free papers—the whole list of the twenty slaves emancipated by Deacon Bayliss being recorded on each paper.
After five weeks hiding at the southern terminus of the "Underground Railroad," they took up their line of march for Canada. In a Quaker settlement in Indiana they found friends to whom they revealed their true relationship, and here they spent a year with a Quaker family named Shugart. But the slight protection afforded by the laws of Indiana did not tend to give them a feeling of security, and so they started again for the promised land with their infant daughter Louisa. On this journey they were assisted on their way, and made easy and comfortable compared with their hasty flight from Tennessee, from whence they walked with swollen and blistered feet, and every nerve strung to its utmost tension from the fear of pursuit by their Southern persecutors.
As times were hard in Canada, Elsie consented to come to Michigan with her husband if he could find a Quaker neighborhood. In their search they found our house, and my husband, Charles Haviland, Jr., after learning their condition, leased Willis twenty acres of ground, mostly openings, for ten years, for the improvements he would make thereon. Here they lived for three years, when one day Elsie saw a strange man peering through the fence.
Her first thought was "a Southerner," and snatching her two Little ones she ran for our house, only a few rods distant. The man pursued her, and she called for help to a neighbor in sight, at which the skulking sneak took himself off to the woods. This incident so thoroughly aroused their fears that they took another farm, a few miles distant, for three years; then a farm near Ypsilanti for a few years; from whence they removed to Monroe, where they induced a friend to write to Willis's old friend and master, Deacon Bayliss, making inquiries after their two daughters, who were left behind in slavery. They received a prompt reply, purporting to come from Bayliss, informing them that their daughters were still living where they left them. He would see them, he said, by the time he received their next letter, which he hoped would be soon, that he might be the happy bearer of glad news to the children from their father and mother. He professed great joy at hearing from them, wished them to write all the particulars about themselves, but cautioned them to write to no one but him, and all would be safe. He requested them to inform him in what town they were living, as he noticed their letter was dated in one town, mailed in another, and he was directed to address them in a third. Their friend, however, strictly cautioned them not to reveal their definite whereabouts, but to answer all other queries. Willis wrote that as his farm lease had expired there, he would have to seek another farm, and did not know where he would be, but to address a letter as before and it would be forwarded to him.
Their next move was to return to their first Michigan home on my premises, a few months after the death of my husband, taking up their abode in the little log-house built for them a few years before, and working my land on shares. Another letter was soon received from their friend Deacon Bayliss, as they supposed, and they urged me to reply; but I firmly refused to write to any one in the land of the slaveholder, lest the message should fall into the hands of enemies, and advised them to leave their daughters in the hands of the Lord, who would yet provide a way of deliverance for them as he had for their parents. In their great anxiety, however, to hear from their children, from whom they had been separated so many years, their plea was strong and persistent: but I remained immovable to all their entreaties, and told them of a slave family, who, after living twenty years in Indiana, had but recently been captured and returned to hopeless bondage. Upon this they yielded to me for the time being, but in a few weeks came again with pleadings made eloquent by suffering. As they had felt the vice-like grip of the peculiar system on their own hearts and lives, they realized too keenly the fate that might any time overtake their daughters. But I still resisted all their entreaties, and in a few days after they applied to J. F. Dolbeare, one of the trustees of Raisin Institute, who, thinking there was no danger, wrote all they desired, telling the supposed Deacon Bayliss all their