The Bondwoman's Narrative (45 page)

p. 210
: “Here was a suit of male apparel exactly corresponding to my size and figure” This sort of coincidence is commonly
found in sentimental novels. Hannah’s use of a disguise as a male echoes that of Ellen Craft in 1848, Clarissa Davis in 1854,
Anna Maria Weems (alias Joe Wright) in 1855. Crafts escaped as a white male; John Wesley Gibson also escaped as a white male.
(See William Still’s
The Underground Railroad
for accounts of these cases of cross-dressing.)

Chapter 18

p. 211
: In both Matthew 8:20 and Luke 9:58, Jesus warns a potential follower:

The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.

That Crafts wished to emphasize her own homelessness during her flight from slavery is reflected in the fact that she considered
giving this chapter three titles: “The Wandering,” “Trials and Difficulties,” and “Strange Company.” The first two titles
were rejected for the third, “Strange Company.”

p. 211
: The “window of opportunity” for Hannah’s escape from the Wheeler plantation in Wilmington, North Carolina, is established
in John Hill Wheeler’s diary by the earlier escape of Jane in July 1855, referred to in her first meeting with Mrs. Wheeler,
and the onset of the Civil War in 1861. Judging from the relevant information contained in Wheeler’s diary, Hannah’s escape
would most likely have occurred between March 21 and May 4, 1857. This period corresponds not only with the Wheelers’ recorded
trip to the plantation from Washington but with several other unique circumstances in their lives during this time, such as
Wheeler’s recent dismissal from his government post. Negative evidence supporting the year 1857 for the escape is provided
by the lack of known visits by the Wheelers to the plantation during the years 1855, 1856 (only the first half of the diary
is extant, but Mr. Wheeler was still in Nicaragua until November of that year), and 1858 (only the last half of this diary
survives). Trips were made by the Wheelers to North Carolina in 1859 (with President Buchanan in early June), 1860 (in the
latter half of December), and 1861 (about July, from which point Wheeler stayed in North Carolina), but Mr. Wheeler’s continual
employment as clerk of the Interior Department in Washington from 1857 would not have occasioned Hannah’s reference to his
recent dismissal from office during any of these years. Furthermore, the relative proximity in time between the departure
of Jane, a much-valued personal servant of Mrs. Wheeler, and the acquisition of Hannah as a competent replacement (less than
two years) logically supports the year 1856 as the date of Hannah’s involvement with the Wheelers and her subsequent escape
in early 1857.

p. 212
: “guided at night by the North Star” The use of the North Star by fugitive slaves as a natural compass was a common
feature of the slave narratives.

p. 212
: “I thought of Elijah and ravens” Crafts here recalls 1 Kings 17:6, in which the prophet Elijah is fed “bread and flesh”
by ravens in the morning and evening while following God’s command to live in the wilderness.

p. 212
: “I cannot describe my journey” Despite their dogged use of verisimilitude—of listing in painstaking detail the who,
what, and where of their experiences as slaves—it was a common feature of most slave narrators to remain silent or sketchy
about their mode of escape, in order to protect the secrecy of their routes and methods from slave catchers. This was especially
the case after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Frederick Douglass severely criticized Henry “Box” Brown for
publishing a book in which he detailed his unusual mode of escape: he was shipped in a crate from Richmond to freedom in Philadelphia.
Douglass argued that other slaves could have utilized this method of escape had Brown only kept it a secret.

p. 214
: “as the Catholic devotee calls over the names of his favorite saints while counting his beads” Crafts is referring
to the rosary. Roman Catholicism was a relatively rare form of Christianity in North Carolina and Virginia in the nineteenth
century.

p. 215
: “This will be my last resting place” Crafts uses standard English for some slaves, especially house servants, to distinguish
them from uneducated field slaves, who usually she depicts speaking dialect. Crafts writes, “This he said in broken incoherent
expressions to which I have given suitable language.” (p. 216)

p. 218
: “and more than all the minister … striving to elicit something of which to make capital for his next sermon” Crafts’s
critique of organized religion is somewhat reminiscent of Frederick Douglass’s critique of the hypocrisy of Christianity vis-à-vis
slavery. For a person so expressly devout, Crafts’s critique of the funeral practices of her time is quite refreshing and
perceptive.

p. 220
: “They mostly prayed that we the slaves might be good and obedient” See note immediately above.

Chapter 19

p. 224
: The full text of this verse, Psalm 37:25, is as follows:

I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.

p. 224
: “but strange to say he had not penetrated my disguise. He learned to love me, however, as a younger brother” Crafts
is reassuring her readers that her virtue remained intact, despite her intimacy with Jacob as they fled the South. No doubt
her pun on
penetrate
was quite unintentional.

p. 224
: “though when compelled by necessity to approach the habitations of men it devolved on me as his color made him obnoxious
to suspicion”
Obnoxious
was commonly used to mean “subject, liable, exposed, or open to,” as
Webster’s
reports. Crafts’s use of a disguise as a white man traveling with a black man replicates the method of escape used by Ellen
and William Craft in 1848. (See note to p. 82 above)

pp. 224–225
: Despite her confessed reticence to divulge details of this escape route, Crafts provides fascinating details
about how Hannah and Jacob traveled together.

p. 227
: “I knew the voice, though I had not recognised the countenance. It was that of my old friend, Aunt Hetty.” Coincidences
such as this were a common feature of sentimental novels. Crafts reminds us of the source of her literacy training by describing
herself as “the Hannah whom she had taught to read.”

p. 228
: “the statute that forbade the instruction of slaves” It was illegal in most antebellum southern states to teach slaves
to read and write.

p. 228
: “like Paul and Silas of old” Both Paul and Silas escaped from prison while evangelizing the new faith of Christianity,
in Philippi. See Acts, Chapter 16.

p. 229
: “a small village of miners” Crafts could be referring to a village in the coal fields of western Virginia, or the
state of West Virginia today. West Virginia became a state in 1863.

p. 230
: “I should find refuge among the colored inhabitants of New Jersey” Crafts’s manuscript was recovered from New Jersey
by a “book scout” in 1948. New Jersey “became a haven for slaves escaping the South,” according to Giles R. Wright’s
Afro-Americans in New Jersey
(Trenton: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1988), p. 39.

p. 230
: “the good old woman supplied me with female apparel” Crafts is now traveling disguised as a white woman.

Chapter 20

p. 231
: In the book of Isaiah, the prophet warns:

Woe unto the wicked! It shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.

Crafts gives her chapter of “just rewards” the title “Retribution.”

p. 231
: “Farther down the river was a steamboat landing” Several navigable rivers flowed through, or near, coal fields in
West and western Virginia, including the Kanawha, the Guyandotte, the Shenandoah, and the Ohio.

p. 232
: “but the mother was, or had been a slave, though she enjoyed all the perquisites and priviledges [sic] of a wife”
Examples of romantic intimacy and faithfulness between masters and slaves were to be found even in the antebellum South. Perhaps
the most famous is that of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. Trappe’s death—the demise of the villain, hoist with his own
petard—was a common feature of sentimental novels.

p. 236
: Crafts comments on Mr. Trappe’s demise with the well-known passage from Hosea. The full verse is Hosea 8:7:

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it
yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.

Chapter 21

p. 237
: Crafts prefaces her final chapter with the second verse of Psalm 23, one of the most popular of all the Psalms:

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

p. 237
: “I dwell now in a neat little Cottage, and keep a school for colored children” A fairly large free black community
thrived in New Jersey before the Civil War, founding several all-black communities. As Giles R. Wright puts it, “By the Civil
War, black New Jerseyans numbered nearly 26,000 and had structured a vibrant institutional life that included churches, schools,
literary societies, fraternal lodges, and benevolent associations. They had also organized to protest racial injustice, in
1849 holding a statewide convention for restoring the franchise lost in 1807.” As Wright concludes, reinforcing Crafts’s claim
to be living there at the end of her novel: “Both free southern blacks and Fugitive Slave participants in the Underground
Railroad settled in New Jersey, dating from the antebellum period, … they helped create or expand all-black settlements such
as Lawnside, which was incorporated in 1926, as a municipality, the state’s first and only all-black community to achieve
such a status.” Giles R. Wright, “New Jersey,”
Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History,
edited by Jack Salzman, David Lionel Smith, and Cornel West (New York: Macmillan, 1996), p. 1989.

p. 237
: When Crafts writes that “There was a hand of Providence in our meeting”—referring to meeting her long-lost mother—she
is putting the matter mildly. And when she writes, on p. 239, that “[y]ou could scarcely believe it,” that “Charlotte, Mrs
Henry’s favorite” slave, lives near her as well, we know that we are deep within the realm of the sentimental novel, which
tends to end “happily ever after.” What is curious about this coincidence, however, is that Crafts’s level of detail here—“a
free mulatto from New Jersey,” “the property of his daughter who dwelt in Maryland,” her “school for colored children”— offers
promising leads for ascertaining eventually more particulars about the life and times of Hannah Crafts.

pp. 238–239
: “He is, and has always been a free man, is a regularly ordained preacher of the Methodist persuasion” The African
Methodist Episcopal Church was well established in New Jersey by the 1850s. The Mount Pisgah African Methodist Episcopal Church
was founded in 1800 in Salem.

Authentication Report:
The Bondwoman’s Narrative

NOTE: Page numbers in the Authentication Report refer to pages in the actual holograph, not this edition.

JOE NICKELL, Ph.D., is an investigator and historical-document examiner. He is author of 17 books including
Pen, Ink and Evidence: A Study of Writing and Writing Materials for the Penman, Collector, and Document Detective
(1990) and
Detecting Forgery: Forensic Investigation of Documents
(1996).

He has been a private investigator, an investigative writer, and teacher of technical writing and literature at the University
of Kentucky. He is now Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Inquiry—International at Amherst, New York, where he investigates
fringe-science claims. He has appeared on numerous television shows as an expert on myths and mysteries, frauds, forgeries,
and hoaxes.