Showing results by author "Josiah Henson" in All Categories

This collection contains: Twelve Years a Slave, Up from Slavery, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, The Life of an American Slave (Fifty Years in Chains), The Experience of Rev. Thomas H. Jones, Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley, a Native African and a Slave, From Log Cabin to the Pulpit, and many more.

Josiah Henson (1789-1883) was an author, abolitionist, and minister. He was born into slavery in Maryland, and escaped to Canada in 1830, where he founded a settlement for fugitive slaves in Ontario. Henson's autobiography, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (1849), is thought to have inspired the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. The autobiography was written down by the abolitionist Samuel Atkins Eliot, a former mayor of Boston and state legislator.

Josiah Henson was born into slavery in Maryland in 1789, and although he endured incredible cruelty and abuse in the years that followed, he was eventually able to earn enough money to purchase his freedom. In fact, he made multiple such attempts, but those efforts were thwarted by swindles and broken deals, and Henson was forced to plot a dangerous escape instead. Under the continual threat of recapture, he, his wife, and their four children made their way north to Canada, where Henson threw himself to the ground, overwhelmed with joy and relief.

Josiah Henson (1789-1883) was born into slavery in Charles County, Maryland. He and his family escaped slavery in a long walk from Kentucky to Ohio. They were helped by Native Americans in the Ohio wilderness and sympathetic boatmen who carry them across Lake Erie to Buffalo, New York. In Canada, Henson organized the Afro-Canadian community and became involved in projects that emphasized independence from white patronage.