The name of this document is entitled, "The Overseer...Sent My Mother Away... To A Retired Place." This story is told by Josiah Henson who was a child slave at the time. In this story Henson explains the horrific story about how his father was sent away and also explains the events that lead up to that tragedy as well. He tells us about how his master's passing was the result of his families separation, the event which separated him from his mother at the very young age of six. The source of this document is Josiah Henson, Uncle Tom's Story of His Life: An Autobiography of the Rev Josiah Henson (London, 1877).
             This document is about Josiah Henson who was born June 15, 1789 in Charles County, Maryland, on a farm that belonged to Mr. Francis Newman. His mother and father were both slaves of Dr. Josiah McPherson, but where hired out to Mr. Newman the man in which his father belonged to. One day the overseer had sent his mother away to a retired place and tried to force himself upon her. Her screams aroused his father, and as he went to see what the noise was, he found his wife struggling with the man. This angered him very much, so he struck the man and within the blink of an eye the overseer was down. He would have killed this man, but the overseer had made a promise that nothing should ever be said of the event that had taken place. The promise was not kept and the laws of the state were after him, for "a nigger had struck a white man" and something was to be done. For a good while his father had stayed on the run hiding in woods, and at night venturing into cabins in search of food that was until he was starved out, and compelled by hunger which forced him to give up and turn himself in. The day of the execution of his penalty had arrived and the Negroes from the neighboring plantations were summoned to witness the scene. Fifty slashes were given to him by a blacksmith named Hewes. The cries from his f...