Narrative of William W. Brown A Fugitive Slave William was born into slavery in 1814 near Mount Sterling, Kentucky, where his mother Elizabeth was a slave. She was held by Dr. John Young and had seven children, each by different fathers. (In addition to William, her children were Solomon, Leander, Benjamin, Joseph, Milford, and Elizabeth.) William's father was George W. Higgins, a white planter and cousin of his master Dr. Young. Higgins had formally acknowledged William as his son and made his cousin Young promise not to sell the boy. But Young did sell him with his mother. William was sold several times before he was twenty years old. William spent the majority of his youth in St. Louis. His masters hired him out to work on steamboats on the Missouri River, then a major thoroughfare for steamships and the slave trade. his work allowed him to see many new places. In 1833, he and his mother escaped together across the Mississippi River, but they were captured in Illinois. In 1834, Brown made a second escape attempt, successfully slipping away from a steamboat when it docked in Cincinnati, Ohio, a free state. In freedom, he took the names of Wells Brown, a Quaker friend who helped him after his escape by providing food, clothes and some money. He learned to read and write, and eagerly sought more education, reading extensively to make up for what he had been deprived.
About the Author: William Wells Brown (circa 1814 - November 6, 1884) was a prominent African-American abolitionist lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian in the United States. Born into slavery in Montgomery County, Kentucky, near the town of Mount Sterling, Brown escaped to Ohio in 1834 at the age of 20. He settled in Boston, where he worked for abolitionist causes and became a prolific writer. His novel Clotel (1853), considered the first novel written by an African American, was published in London, where he resided at the time; it was later published in the United States. Brown was a pioneer in several different literary genres, including travel writing, fiction, and drama. In 1858 he became the first published African-American playwright, and often read from this work on the lecture circuit. Following the Civil War, in 1867 he published what is considered the first history of African Americans in the Revolutionary War. He was among the first writers inducted to the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame. A public school was named for him in Lexington, Kentucky.