Excerpt from Narrative of Henry Watson: A Fugitive Slave I was born in Virginia, about thirteen miles from Fredericksburg, as_ near as I can now recollect, in the year 1818. Mother was a slave, and belonged to a man by the name of 'bibb; whose Christian name I cannot remember. My mother was called Letty. Slaves seldom have but one name; and I never heard her called by afiy other. I was at that time called Bill. I never had any brother or sister, that I know of. Like the most of my brothers in bondage, I have no correct account of my age. Slaves keep the birth of their children by the different seasons of the year. Children often ask their parents their age. The answer is, this planting corn time, you are six, eight, or ten, just as it\may happen to be but even this knowledge was I deprived of by my master, who was one of those proud Virginians, whose principal business was to raise slaves for the market; though I was permitted to remain with my mother on his plantation until I was about eight years of age. My mother was the cook at what slaves call the great house. I was allowed to remain with her at the house. The. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.