They were now captured
and the slaves were escorted by their master back to the plantation; but
Concklin dropped off the steamboat by night only to be drowned in the Ohio
by the weight of his fetters. Adopting a safer plan, Peter now procured
endorsements from leading abolitionists and made a soliciting tour of New
York and New England by which he raised funds enough to buy his family's
freedom. At the conclusion of the narrative of their lives Peter and his
wife were domestics in a New Jersey boardinghouse, one of their two
sons was a blacksmith's apprentice in a neighboring town, the other had
employment in a Pennsylvania village, and the daughter was at school in
Philadelphia.[63]
[Footnote 63: Kate E.R. Pickard, _The Kidnapped and the Ransomed, being the
personal recollections of Peter Still and his wife Vina after forty years
of slavery_ (Syracuse, 1856). The dialogue in which the book abounds is,
of course, fictitious, but the outlines of the narrative and the documents
quoted are presumably authentic.]
Solomon Northrup had been a raftsman and farmer about Lake Champlain until
in 1841 when on the ground of his talent with the fiddle two strangers
offered him employment in a circus which they said was then at Washington.
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