I was born in Tuckahoe, Talbot Country, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never havi
My mother was of a darker complexion than either my grandmother or grandfather.
My father was a white man. The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know nothing; the means of knowing was withheld from me. My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant-before I knew her as my mother. It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a veryearly age. Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an older woman, too old for field labor. For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it was to hinder the development of the child's affection towards its mother.