2 Quotes & Sayings By Soujourner Truth
Soujourner Truth was born Isabella Baumfree on November 26, 1797 in New York State. Her life can be divided into two distinct periods: the early and the later. The first started in 1818 when, at the age of three years and six months, she was taken from her parents and sold into slavery. The second started in 1826 when she was freed by William Lloyd Garrison and his wife, who became her legal guardians after learning of her plight
This period is characterized by periods of homelessness and poverty, alternating with periods of relative prosperity. During this time she also became a public speaker, an agent for abolitionist causes, and a spy for the Underground Railroad. She died in 1883. Soujourner Truth was the oldest of fourteen children born to Jacob and Elizabeth Baumfree.
By 1817, when Isabella was six, her parents were struggling to support themselves and their children. Isabella's mother had become pregnant for a second time but had not yet finished bearing children; of the eight remaining children living at home, only four were still alive. One day in June 1817 Jacob Baumfree left his family only to return within a few hours to inform them that he had lost his job as a cooper (barrel maker) and that he could no longer provide for them all.
He had heard that there was a slave auction to take place in nearby Troy around 9 o'clock that morning so he decided to try to buy his wife Elizabeth back from the slave-trader who owned her. Accompanied by two white men who would later claim they were acting as agents for Baumfree's employer, Jacob went to the auction site but was unable to purchase Elizabeth back from the slave-trader before she was sold away but he did manage to gain possession of Isabella instead. Jacob Baumfree claimed that he bought Isabella because he believed that she was his wife's child rather than his own because it would be easier for him to bring her home without raising suspicion if he appeared to be buying another slave rather than his own child back from slavery. This account may have been truthful or it may have been intended as a lie designed to save Jacob's own family from the stigma of being associated with slavery.
It is difficult to know whether either version is true since there are no records other than those written by Isabella herself which tell us anything about her early childhood other than that