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Maryland State Archives Adam Goodheart Collection MSA SC 5826 msa_sc5826_3_1-0012 Enlarge and print image (836K) |
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Maryland State Archives Adam Goodheart Collection MSA SC 5826 msa_sc5826_3_1-0012 Enlarge and print image (836K) |
| msa_sc5826_3_1-0012 ©Maryland State Archives - 12 - landed products, and I doubt if there is now a thorough bred horse, known to be such, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Added to the causes that were swiftly and surely revolutionizing that once prosperous country, was the facility with which negroes escaped from involuntary labor. One summer when my Father was at Annapolis and my Mother, with all her children, at the Bay- side with her relatives the Tilghman's, Jacob, the former's confidential servant with his wife the housekeeper, and four grown sons and two daughters, all employed about the house, went off one night without leaving a trace of the route taken and were never heard of afterwards. They could only have gone so silently and unobserved by a vessel which probably went down the bay and out to sea. My Father was greatly dis- tressed and immeasurably inconvenienced, but my Mother who was an avowed abolitionist altho' equally, if not more embarrassed in her domestic economy, only regretted that every slave on the place did not go at the same time. With thirteen small children, she was quite willing and able to go to work with her own hands to keep the house in order. The loss was really no pecuniary loss, rather a gain for others were called in from the field, and soon became good servants under my Mother's instructions accomplished cooks, waiters, chambermaids, and gardeners. There was nothing in the way of con- fectionery, or gardening in which the good old Lady was not an expert, and she always took great pleasure in teaching. Not one thing was stolen from the house or estate by these absconding people, tho' the opportunity was ample. They were the first, and what was remarkable, considering the perfect success of their flight, the only persons of the numerous slaves, belonging to us who ever left their homes, until death or the proclamation of Mr. Lincoln set them free. There was one circumstance |