My Bondage and My Freedom

LACE OF BIRTH-CHARACTER OF THE DISTRICT-TUCKAHOE-

ORIGIN OFTHE NAME-CHOPTANK RIVER-TIME OF BIRTH-

GENEALOGICALTREES-MODE OF COUNTING TIME-NAMES

OF GRANDPARENTS-THEIR POSITION-GRANDMOTHER ES-

PECIALLY ESTEEMED-"BORNTO GOOD LUCK"-SWEET POTATOES-

SUPERSTITION-THE LOG CABIN-ITS CHARMS-SEPARATING

CHILDREN-MYAUNTS-THEIR NAMES-FIRSTKNOWLEDGE

OF BEINGA SLAVE-OLDMASTER-GRIEFSAND JOYS OF CHILDHOOD-

COMPARATIVE HAPPINESS OF THE SLAVE-BOY AND THE SON

OF A SLAVEHOLDER.

In Talbot county, Eastern Shore, Maryland, near Easton, the county town

of that county, there is a small district of country, thinly populated, and re-

markable for nothing that I know of more than for the worn-out, sandy,

desert-like appearance of its soil, the general dilapidation of its farms and

fences, the indigent and spiritless character of its inhabitants, and the preva-

lence of ague and fever.

The name of this singularly unpromising and truly famine stricken district

is Tuckahoe, a name well known to all Marylanders, black and white. It was

3 FREDERICK DOUGLASS

given to this section of country probably, at the first, merely in derision; or

it may possibly have been applied to it, as I have heard, because some one

of its earlier inhabitants had been guilty of the petty meanness of stealing a

hoe-or taking a hoe that did not belong to him. Eastern Shore men usu-

ally pronounce the word took, as tuck; Took-a-hoe, therefore, is, in Maryland

parlance, Tuckahoe. But, whatever may have been its origin-and about this

I will not be positive-that name has stuck to the district in question; and

it is seldom mentioned but with contemptIt was in this dull, flat, and unthrifty district, or neighborhood, surrounded

by awhite population of the lowest order, indolent and drunken to a proverb,

and among slaves, who seemed to ask,"Oh! what's the use?" every time they

lifted a hoe, that I-without any fault of mine was born, and spent the first

years of my childhood.

The reader will pardon so much about the place of my birth, on the score

that it is always a fact of some importance to know where a man is born, if,

indeed, it be important to know anything about him. In regard to the time

of my birth, I cannot be as definite as I have been respecting the place. Nor,

indeed, can I impart much knowledge concerning my parents. Genealogical

trees do not flourish among slaves. A person of some consequence here in

the north, sometimes designated father, is literally abolished in slave law and

slave practice. It is only once in a while that an exception is found to this

statement. I never met with a slave who could tell me how old he was. Few

slave-mothers know anything of the months of the year, nor of the days of

the month. They keep no family records, with marriages, births, and deaths.

They measure the ages of their children by spring time, winter