I was born in a typical log cabin, about fourteen by sixteen feet square.

In this cabin I lived with my mother and a brother and sister till after the Civil War, when we were all declared free.
Of my ancestry I know almost nothing.

In the slave quarters, and even later, I heard whispered conversations among the coloured people of the tortures which the slaves, including, no doubt, my ancestors on my mother's side, suffered in the middle passage of the slave ship while being conveyed from Africa to America.

I have been unsuccessful in securing any information that would throw any accurate light upon the history of my family beyond my mother.

She, I remember, had a half-brother and a half-sister.