My Harriett cried something awful and I just hurt mighty bad for us all.
We was still in the hands of the sheriff because Mr. John Sanford died on May 5, 1857. Before he died, he give us back to his sister, Miss Irene, in his will. And it turn out that Dr. Chaffee didn’t even know his wife, Miss Irene, owned us when he married her. He was a abolitionist just like that Elijah Lovejoy. The good folks in Massachusetts was upset with Dr. Chaffee when they read in the paper that he and him new bride was slave owners.
The Blows never stopped caring about us and helping us and they wrote to Dr. Chaffee as soon as they heard he didn’t want no slaves no more. Dr. Chaffee was all too happy to sale us back to Taylor, the son of my first Massa Peter Blow. Taylor was a boy I once played with and he was the man who finally freed me. He freed my Harriett, my Lizzie, and my Eliza, too. Dr. Chaffee probably would have freed us himself, but Lawyer Field said that there was a law that say you cannot free your own slave if he or she did not stay in the same state with you. So he had to sale us to Taylor Blow back in St. Louis to free us.
Don’t know where Lawyer Field was that day. But on May 26, 1857, his partner, Lawyer Arbu Crane, drew up our freedom papers and went over to the court house with us and Taylor Blow to see Judge Alexander Hamilton, who gave us our freedom forever.
I was tired something fierce, but I was free!
News about our freedom was in newspapers all over the country. The next month Lawyer Field told us that even that man Abraham Lincoln who was running for president of the United States of America spoke about us in one of his speeches. This man named Lincoln said that we was human being, just like a white man, and we should be free. That was some kind of special. Made me feel like a man.
After we was free, Lawyer Field helped me get a job at the Barnum Hotel over on Second and Walnut Street and my Harriett washed and ironed for white folks. In the evening when I got off work, I would take the clean clothes to the white folks. I would bring home a whole basket of dirty clothes for her and my girls to wash, iron, and fold.
One day my Harriett was washing and the girls was ironing when someone came knocking at the door.
“Who that?” Harriett called out as I went to the back of our small place to hide. Harriett always wanted me to hide when white folks came by. She had heard a lot of white folks talking about taking me north to make money. They believed some whites in the North would pay a whole lot of money just to see the slave whose case went all the way to the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. Said they would even pay me a thousand dollars a month. That money did not mean nothing to Harriett as bad as we needed it. She said we would make a good living as free people just like anybody else. The other reason she didn’t open the door was because folks was trying to get a picture of me. My Harriett believed it was bad luck. She said that taking our picture was like stealing our spirits.
“Who that?” Harriett yelled again.
“Is this where Dred Scott lives?” A voice that sound like a white man yelled back.
Harriett got mighty mad, but she open the door. There stood two white men, not one.
I came out before Harriett told them folks a piece of her mind.
The men were reporters who wanted to do a story about us and they talk to us a long time about having my picture taken at the Fitzgibbon Gallery. Harriett just kept on telling them people no until finally they told her they would take her picture and the girls’. The girls really wanted their picture taken, so Harriett finally broke down and said “Yes.”
The next day we all got dressed in the best clothes that we had and left our place in the alley and headed over to the Fitzgibbon Gallery. The walk was not that long, but it always took us a long time to get around the city, because folks was always stopping us to talk. Everybody wanted to see the slaves that white folks was making such a fuss over.
When we got to the gallery, one by one they took our picture. When we finish, we all went back home, with our spirits. Free spirits.
