Page:The Story of the Jubilee Singers (7th).djvu/122

 CHAPTER XI.

PERSONAL HISTORIES CONCLUDED.

early home was in Wilson County, Tennessee, where he was born in 1854. His father was sold away before his birth, and his family never heard from him afterward. His mother was in the habit of running away and hiding in the woods, in the hope of escaping from slavery. But it was never very long before she would be found, brought back, flogged, and set to work again. Whippings, however, proved of no avail, and she was finally sold and sent further south. Tom was then but two or three years old, and his earliest recollection is of parting with his mother—how he stood on the doorsteps as she kissed him and bade him good-bye, and how she cried as they dragged her away from her children. Two or three years afterward his mistress told him one day, as he was playing around the house, that they had heard from his mother. She had been whipped almost to death, probably for another attempt to obtain her freedom; and that was the last he has ever heard from her. He had an older brother and several sisters. Some of them were