The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N. C.

Note: Here is Mr. Lunsford Lane who was born enslaved in Raleigh, NC on a plantation. His life story is full and truthful from his own mouth and words. It is worthy to be learned and taught.

Again, there is no proof to date that he crossed paths with Lunsford Richardson (a White Man from NC), nor had anything to do with creating or helping to create Vicks Vapor Rub. -End Note-

Lunsford Lane was born in Raleigh, NC on May 30, 1803 – he died on June 27, 1879. .After the death of his youngest daughter in April 1872, Lunsford Lane moved to Greenwich Village in New York City; he died sometime during the month of June 1879 in a multi-family tenement at 15 Cornelia Street in the West Village of dropsy and old age.

Shortly before his death he helped found a school in New Bern, North Carolina.

He was a formerly enslaved African American who became an entrepreneur from North Carolina who bought freedom for himself and his family.

He became a vocal opponent of slavery and wrote a slave narrative autobiography.

His life and narrative shows the plight of slavery, even for the relatively privileged slaves.

Born enslaved, Lunsford Lane Bought His Freedom. Now North Carolina Is Honoring Him

Raleigh N&O By Josh Shaffer -December 24, 2018

As a young slave, Lunsford Lane glimpsed a path to freedom when he sold a basket of peaches and collected 30 cents — the first money he’d ever touched.

Not long after that, he won a few marbles and sold those, too, adding 60 cents to his pile.

Slowly, Lane built a nest egg out of odd jobs, chopping extra wood at night, selling flavored tobacco and handmade pipes to members of the North Carolina state legislature in Raleigh. He stashed his loot away.

Then in 1835, he bought his freedom for $1,000 — a fortune earned through sweat and beatings.

.“I cannot describe it,” Lane wrote in his 1842 book “Narrative,” “only it seemed as though I was in heaven. I used to lie awake whole nights thinking of it. And oh, the strange thoughts that passed through my soul, like so many rivers of light; deep and rich were their waves as they rolled; — these were more to me than sleep ... But I cannot describe my feelings to those who have never been slaves.”

This week, the state approved a historical marker for Lane, the sixth sign in Raleigh to honor a former slave. Sometime in June, said Ansley Wegner of the N.C. Highway Historical Marker Program, the man born property of Sherwood Haywood will be recognized on Edenton Street — just across the street from the Capitol where he sold pipes for 10 cents each.

But even after Lane paid the price, freedom stayed out of reach. A Raleigh judge declared that he had done nothing “meritorious” to earn his freedom, forcing Lane to travel to New York, according to the marker program’s research.

Twice, he tried to relocate in Raleigh, finding no welcome. A state law forbade freed slaves for staying longer than 20 days, so Lane paid to free one of his daughters and fled north.

A second time, in 1842, a mob of violent White racists in Raleigh tarred and feathered Lane for giving abolitionist speeches up north, and he escaped to Massachusetts with the rest of his family.

“The thought that I was now in my loved, though recently acquired home, that my family were with me where the stern, cruel, hated hand of slavery could never reach us more ... almost overwhelmed me with emotion, and I had a deep and strange communion with my own soul,” Lane wrote in his Narrative.

Wegner said Raleigh’s marker collection includes five others with backgrounds in slavery: Anna Julia Cooper, Charles Hunter, Edward Johnson, James Harris and James Young.

In his “Narrative,” Lane describes his luck at being a house servant in Raleigh rather than a plantation slave, but still the knowledge that he would always serve another “preyed upon my heart like a never-dying worm.”

Once in Massachusetts, Lane worked in a Union hospital during the Civil War and later sold medicine, the state’s research said.

Before dying in 1879, he helped found a school in New Bern, never forgetting that he was once forbidden to hold a book.

“The wine fresh from the clustering grapes never filled so sweet a cup as mine,” Lane wrote, concluding his book. “May I and my family be permitted to drink it, remembering whence it came!”

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Excerpt from Lunsford Lane, b. 1803 The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C. Embracing an Account of His Early Life, the Redemption by Purchase of Himself and Family from Slavery, and His Banishment from the Place of His Birth for the Crime of Wearing a Colored Skin.

Published by Himself. Boston: J.G. Torrey, Printer, 1842.

The small city of Raleigh, North Carolina, it is known, is the capital of the State, situated in the interior, and containing about thirty-six hundred inhabitants. Here lived Mr. SHERWOOD HAYWOOD, a man of considerable respectability, a planter, and the cashier of a bank.

He owned three plantations, at the distances respectively of seventy-five, thirty, and three miles from his residence in Raleigh.

He owned in all about two hundred and fifty slaves, among the rest my mother, who was a house servant to her master, and of course a resident in the city.

My father was a slave to a near neighbor. The apartment where I was born and where I spent my childhood and youth was called "the kitchen," situated some fifteen or twenty rods from the "great house."

Here the house servants lodged and lived, and here the meals were prepared for the people in the mansion. The "field hands," of course, reside upon the plantation.

On the 30th of May, 1803, I was ushered into the world but I did not begin to see the rising of its dark clouds, nor fancy how they might be broken and dispersed, until some time afterwards.

My infancy was spent upon the floor, in a rough cradle, or sometimes in my mother's arms. My early boyhood in playing with the other boys and girls, colored and white, in the yard, and occasionally doing such little matters of labor as one of so young years could.

I knew no difference between myself and the white children nor did they seem to know any in turn.

Sometimes my master would come out and give a biscuit to me, and another to one of his own white boys but I did not perceive the difference between us.

I had no brothers or sisters, but there were other colored families living in the same kitchen, and the children playing in the same yard, with me and my mother.

When I was ten or eleven years old, my master set me regularly to cutting wood, in the yard in the winter, and working in the garden in the summer.

And when I was fifteen years of age, he gave me the care of the pleasure horses, and made me his carriage driver; but this did not exempt me from other labor, especially in the summer.

Early in the morning I used to take his three horses to the plantation, and turn them into the pasture to graze, and myself into the cotton or cornfield, with a hoe in my hand, to work through the day and after sunset I would take these horses back to the city, a distance of three miles, feed them, and then attend to any other business my master or any of his family had for me to do, until bed time, when with my blanket in my hand, I would go into the dining room to rest through the night.

The next day the same round of labor would be repeated, unless some of the family wished to ride out, in which case I must be on hand with the horses to wait upon them, and in the meantime to work about the yard.

On Sunday I had to drive to Church twice, which with other things necessary to be done, took the whole day. So my life went wearily on from day to day, from night to night, and from week to week.

When I began to work, I discovered the difference between myself and my master's white children. They began to order me about, and were told to do so by my master and mistress.

I found, too, that they had learned to read, while I was not permitted to have a book in my hand. To be in the possession of anything written or printed, was regarded as an offence. And then there was the fear that I might be sold away from those who were dear to me, and conveyed to the far South.

I had learned that being a slave I was subject to this worst (to us) of all calamities and I knew of others in similar situations to myself, thus sold away.

My friends were not numerous but in proportion as they were few they were dear and the thought that I might be separated from them forever, was like that of having the heart torn from its socket; while the idea of being conveyed to the far South, seemed infinitely worse than the terrors of death.

To know, also, that I was never to consult my own will, but was, while I lived, to be entirely under the control of another, was another state of mind hard for me to bear. Indeed all things now made me feel, what I had before known only in words, that I was a slave.

Deep was this feeling, and it preyed upon my heart like a never--dying worm. I saw no prospect that my condition would ever be changed. Yet I used to plan in my mind from day to day, and from night to night, how I might be free.

One day, while I was in this state of mind, my father gave me a small basket of peaches. I sold them for thirty cents, which was the first money I ever had in my life. Afterwards I won some marbles, and sold them for sixty cents, and some weeks after Mr. Hog from Fayetteville, came to visit my master, and on leaving gave me one dollar.

After that Mr. Bennahan from Orange county, gave me a dollar, and a son of my master fifty cents. These sums, and the hope that then entered my mind of purchasing at some future time my freedom, made me long for money; and plans for money-making took the principal possession of my thoughts.

At night I would steal away with my axe, get a load of wood to cut for twenty-five cents, and the next morning hardly escape a whipping for the offence. But I persevered until I had obtained twenty dollars.

Now I began to think seriously of becoming able to buy myself; and cheered by this hope, I went on from one thing to another, laboring "at dead of night," after the long weary day's toil for my master was over, till I found I had collected one hundred dollars. This sum I kept hid, first in one place and then in another, as I dare not put it out, for fear I should lose it.