Chapter 1

_Childhood_

PLACE OF BIRTH--CHARACTER OF THE DISTRICT--TUCKAHOE--ORIGIN OF
THE NAME--CHOPTANK RIVER--TIME OF BIRTH--GENEALOGICAL TREES--MODE
OF COUNTING TIME--NAMES OF GRANDPARENTS--THEIR POSITION--
GRANDMOTHER ESPECIALLY ESTEEMED--"BORN TO GOOD LUCK--SWEET
POTATOES--SUPERSTITION--THE LOG CABIN--ITS CHARMS--SEPARATING
CHILDREN--MY AUNTS--THEIR NAMES--FIRST KNOWLEDGE OF BEING A
SLAVE--OLD MASTER--GRIEFS AND 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 remarkable 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 prevalence
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 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 usually 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 contempt and derision, on
account of the barrenness of its soil, and the ignorance,
indolence, and poverty of its people. Decay and ruin are
everywhere visible, and the thin population of the place would
have quitted it long ago, but for the Choptank river, which runs
through it, from which they take abundance of shad and herring,
and plenty of ague and fever.

It was in this dull, flat, and unthrifty district, or
neighborhood, surrounded by a white 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