Feb. 27, 2007 -- The University of Virginia Library has acquired a
unique and previously unknown African-American slave narrative, which has
been added to the University's Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections
Library.

    "Rambles of a Runaway from Southern Slavery," first published in
Stratford, Ontario in 1869, was not listed in any library or bibliographic
catalog. The 72-page autobiographical account relates the experiences of
Henry Goings, a Virginia-born slave who escaped to freedom in Canada. "It is
unusual to find new examples that were previously unrecorded," said Edward
Gaynor, a curator at the Small Special Collections Library, who has been
investigating the volume.

    More than 200 book-length slave narratives are known to have been
published in the United States and England between 1760 and 1947. The
University of Virginia Library possesses 90 of them in their original
editions among its large holdings of rare books and manuscripts relating to
African-American history, literature and culture.

    The library also has a large collection of plantation documents (many of
which are on microfilm), passage records, Bibles, photographs and personal
letters, including 150 from former slaves to John Hartwell Cocke, a Fluvanna
plantation owner and a founder of the University. Cocke, a planter,
reformer, general, and statesman, freed many of his slaves to emigrate to
Liberia and many wrote back telling of their experiences in Africa, about
the ocean passage and conditions in their new country.

    "Much of the history of slavery was written from the owners' records,'
said Michael F. Plunkett, a Harrison Institute Fellow and director emeritus
of the Special Collection library. "These letters are significant because
they give the history from the slave's point of view."

    So do slave narratives, personal accounts by fugitive or former slaves
of their experiences while enslaved and their attempts - not always
successful - to gain freedom. Former slaves, such as Frederick Douglass,
wrote and published their own accounts, while other stories were written or
edited by abolitionist activists who thought circulating such accounts could
aid their cause.

    The authenticity of Goings' account is supported by contemporary
accounts. In 1855, Boston journalist Benjamin Drew traveled to Canada where
he interviewed dozens of fugitive slaves from the United States. Among the
interviews that he published the following year in "A North-Side View of
Slavery," is one given by a Henry Gowens of Galt (now Cambridge), Ontario.
Gowens mainly talks about his life as a slave in Lauderdale County, Alabama,
but adds "I shall give the particulars more in detail when I publish the
whole history of my life to the people of the United States and Canada."

    "Close correspondence between several details from Gowens' interview and
those in Goings' book make it almost certain that they were same the man,"
Gaynor explained. Spellings of family and place names were fluid during the
period.

    According to Goings' published narrative, he was the son of enslaved
parents, Abraham and Catharine Turner, born in Virginia on the estate of
James Walker, "within three miles of a place called Window Shades" -
possibly Windsor Shades Plantation in New Kent County. His birth name was
Elijah Turner. He was sold several times, married, and when it looked as if
he were destined for Mississippi, he escaped. He assumed the name of Henry
Goings, a free man of color, whose "free paper" he had purchased for $15. He
then fled north, leaving his wife behind. As Henry Goings, he lived in
various places in Ohio, Illinois and Michigan, before settling in Canada.

    "The commemoration of birthdays is a luxury unknown to expatriated
Africans; in fact, there is little cause for grateful recollection of the
day which added but another victim to a state of miserable servitude,"
Goings said in his book.

    Goings says that he owned a one-acre homestead in Chatham, Ontario,
which he had to sell at one point to pay legal bills. The 16 December 1852
issue of the "Voice of the Fugitive," Canada's first black abolitionist
newspaper, advertises the sale of a farm belonging to Henry Goings, thus
corroborating Goings' narrative and supporting its authenticity.

    It is not known whether Goings penned his own account or whether it was
dictated to an unidentified ghostwriter. The preface is dated 1864, but the
volume, "Rambles of a Runaway from Southern Slavery," was not published
until 1869. It was printed by J. M. Robb, a newspaper publisher in
Stratford, Ontario, a city with links to the Underground Railroad movement.

        The back flyleaf of the volume contains a penciled inscription by
Nellie Mackyes of Onondaga, near Syracuse, N.Y. During the mid-19th century,
Syracuse was a major center of abolitionist activity that supported
anti-slavery societies in Canada. U.Va.'s special collections library
acquired the volume in August 2006 from a New Jersey bookseller who had
purchased it in the Syracuse area.

    Narratives published by fugitive and former slaves are a fundamental
resource for the study of 18th and 19th century American history and
literature. These narratives provide first-hand accounts of slave life and
relate the difficulties faced by African-Americans as they struggled against
racism and second-class citizenship in the North.

     "The need for and the power of these narratives did not diminish with
the conclusion of the Civil War," Gaynor said. "Former slaves documented
their experiences of enslavement, both to remind Americans what had
precipitated the Civil War and to continue the struggle for full inclusion
in American society."

    Christian Dupont, director of the Albert and Shirley Small Special
Collections Library, said the library will pursue the re-publication of
Goings' narrative in print and electronic form. Currently, the volume may be
consulted in the Small Library reading room.

    Contact [log in to unmask] for more information.


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Edward Gaynor
Associate Director
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library
University of Virginia
P.O. Box 400110
Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4110
(434) 924-3138
(434) 924-4968 fax
[log in to unmask]
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/

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