Slaves to Freedom

By Kathy Tilghman

Kathy Tilghman recounts the turbulent times of antebellum America through a friendship between two women: a black slave and an Irish immigrant. Both travel the Underground Railroad but neither knows the sacrifices that will be asked of them to achieve the freedom they desperately want.
This is a beautifully written historical novel. Pat T.

The story moves at a fast pace and I could not put it down. Toni D.

This is an adventure packed novel where the characters choose healing over wrong-doing that adds depth and credibility to the novel. Gabriella K.

Two powerful stories that can never be told enough. E.B.M.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Sep 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504337403

Kathy Tilghman

Kathy Tilghman began researching Slaves to Freedom while writing her book, A Vision of Freedom: African-Americans and the United States Capitol. She became fascinated with stories of survival on the Underground Railroad and also with tales of Irish immigration to the United States during the 1850s. She lives in Parkville, Maryland, and is working on the sequel to Slaves to Freedom.

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Copyright © 2015 Kathy Tilghman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Also by Kathy Tilghman,

A Vision of Freedom: African Americans and the U.S. Capitol

Balboa Press

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-3739-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-3740-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015912641

Balboa Press rev. date: 9/23/2015

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Old Irish adage:

Remember your soul and your liberty.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

After many years of research about the Irish potato famine, Underground Railroad in America, and Maryland history, this novel is complete. The men and women who risked their lives daily so slaves could be free, astonish me still.

I am indebted to those who first helped to birth the characters in this book: Emily Hanlon, Roberta Silver, and the creative collective of women in the International Women’s Writing Guild in New York City. Throughout the writing of this book, I am thankful to Jill Porcino and Gabriella King for their perceptive analysis and unending encouragement of my novel through its many incarnations. Also, I owe sincere thanks to my editor, Cliff Carle, who assisted me with editorial guidance and expertise structuring the many chapters of this book. Thank you to the staff of the Maryland Historical Society who directed me to numerous pictures and stories of Baltimore in the 1850s. And, thank you to the many authors of books I used to research the listed topics.

And, thanks to my family for the many car trips to Harpers Ferry, Gettysburg, and Fort McHenry which gave birth to my fascination with history.

CHAPTER 1

CLONAUGH, IRELAND — WINTER, 1848

L ord Hargrove Bromwell puffed on his cigar as he stared out his floor-to-ceiling, second-story window onto the rolling, verdant hills of his English estate, which sat in the village of Clonaugh, Ireland. When he looked at his landscape, dotted with thatched roofs atop white stone cottages in various states of near collapse, stacked stone fences around lifeless potato plots, and the hovels of his Irish tenant farmers, he longed to sail across the Irish Sea and return to his home in London.

A few bare-limbed trees sat beside scrub brush, rocks, and boulders that jutted out of the ground. He could barely distinguish the few men who shuffled along the dirt roads and carried shovels to dig for potatoes.

The last rays of sunlight filtered across the glass of wine he gripped in his hand. A lone horse and wagon lumbered past the black iron gate at the entrance to his property. His land agent, Killiam Barnes, had arrived. He called to his servant to meet Barnes at the door and escort him upstairs.

Come in, Barnes. Share a glass of wine with me? We’ve got business to discuss.

Killiam looked around the landlord’s office at the black brocade divan, large mahogany desk, and feather pen on a piece of paper. He knew this wouldn’t take long. Bromwell only pulled him into his affairs when there was dirty work to be done.

I’ve got to get my land in Clonaugh looking like this again, he said as he pointed to the acres of lush, grassy expanse that sprawled for miles. Blackened potatoes have ruined it, and it might never grow anything again. Now it can’t feed my tenants or anything else. The sooner we prune them, the better. Rearing cattle and sheep can turn quite a profit, and I’m sure you’d much rather manage herds than force rents from those paupers. Much more profit in the meat and wool businesses. The Irish can go to the workhouse. That’s their lot anyway. And if that doesn’t suit them, then they’ll go to America.

Barnes stared at his employer’s perfectly coiffed gray hair and manicured sideburns, which extended down his jowls; at his deep red ascot gracing his stark white shirt; at the black pants and dinner jacket. He knew Bromwell was entertaining guests in a few hours.

I’m going to go bankrupt soon if I don’t do something about the farmers that owe me rent, Bromwell continued. I’ve waited three months and that’s long enough, especially since I know they are no closer with coming up with my due than the day I granted them an extension. I’m not running a charity. Land is made to turn a profit, and if the Irish can’t do that, well, it’s none of my affair.

But sir, Barnes interjected. With all due respect, you know as well as I that they’re penniless and far too many of them for you to pay their way to America. You need to preserve your capital, not send a dying people overseas.

Ah, I appreciate you always looking out for my interests, but I’ll have to take the loss, Barnes. It’s the only way I’ll be rid of them if they won’t agree to go to the workhouse. I can’t waste any more time. I’ve got to save my property, Irish be damned. Every time I ride through Clonaugh, I’m sickened by the condition of my land and the dirty, filthy hovels that sit on it. I won’t be humiliated by putting it up for sale to the highest bidder.

What do you want me to do, sir?

You’re a good man, Barnes, and you’ve made pronouncements like this before. Hang another eviction notice on St. Mary’s Church gate so they’ll see it coming out of Mass on Sunday. Then Monday morning, get some Irish boys together and tumble the houses. Once they’re burned, tell them they have two choices: the workhouses or money to go to America. Anybody that wants to go to the workhouse, take them. Anybody that wants the money, give it to them and send them on their way. Make sure you keep your boys around you in case anyone thinks about pummeling you for the money. I can’t afford any uprising from ignorant Irish.

CHAPTER 2

A nna hated the antiseptic smell of this hospital. Their landlord had erected what the tenants referred to as a fever shack, thatched roof, dirt floors, one cot lined up after another, bodies too weak to move lying on them. The outside walls were painted sterile white, in stark contrast to the darkness within. The air smelled of death: a dark, mysterious smell that overpowered anything that resembled life. The only thing that diluted it were the small lanterns that lit the doctor and nurse’s paths as they assisted thin, starved bodies to their cots, only to cover them with a sheet and see that they were carried out and buried at the church cemetery days later. She pitied her mother having to smell this place, desperately wished to be out in the open air, away from here and the chance that she, too, would one day lie on the same cot.

Anna stared hard into her beloved daughter’s eyes, finding there the desperation that mirrored her own. What she would give for Sarah not to witness another death so close on the heels of her father’s. The girl had heard him breathe his last breath, and now she’d hear her grandmother, Mary Browne’s, as well. Anna stroked her cheek, swallowed hard before gently acknowledging to herself as much as her daughter her next words. Sarah, listen to me, girl. Grandmother will not live much longer. We must say our good-byes while there’s still time.

As Sarah watched her ma, she felt tears at the corners of her eyes and shook her head. No, not Grandma too. Ma, she’s got to go to America with us. She has to go too.

Anna hugged her daughter, but twelve-year-old Sarah pushed her away. Sarah hated seeing her like this: shoulders slumped and clutching her worn brown scarf tight to her chest as if grasping it was what kept her going. Her black hair, which had at one time been full and flowing down her back, now hung in matted strands. Sarah was relieved she kept it covered with a dingy brown scarf. Her gray cotton dress hung from her bony frame and was two sizes too big and wrinkled and torn at the hem. Every time Sarah looked at her mother’s dress, she hated her own gray one even more.

Her mother had the worried look of defeat, eyes cast toward the floor. She had seen this look on her mother’s face only once, when her father had died, and it had terrified her. What if her mother wouldn’t be able to take care of her anymore? She had known other children who were separated from their families who were too poor to pay rent to the landlord—or else go to the workhouse, an unendurable fate. She felt her mother’s and the Laughlin family defeat, which had slowly enveloped them in a tide of sadness and despair the past two years since the ground had spewed forth blackened potatoes, seize her body.

Can’t we pray for her? We can’t let her die too—isn’t there something we can do? Sarah said desperately.

It’s too late for prayers now.

Sarah stared at the floor, wishing her mother could take back the words that hung heavy between them. Her mother’s hopelessness frightened her as much as Grandma’s famine fever, which, once contracted, meant barely more than a few weeks before burial in the churchyard. She had been able to push that thought to the furthest corner of her mind until her mother’s words startled that fact into recognition once more.

The thought of losing her grandma forever made every bone in her young body ache to be consoled one last time in her arms. She had confided things to her grandma that she had never told Ma, and Grandma had kept her confidence.

Sarah looked from her grandma to her ma, and panic overtook her as she thought of the possibility of losing her ma too. She could not imagine what her ma felt at the loss of her own mother. Sarah slipped her arm through her mother’s and said, I love you, Ma.

Anna patted Sarah’s arm and said, I love you too, my girl. And Grandma has always loved you. Don’t ever forget that.

The thought stabbed Anna as surely as if it had been a knife. As she glanced at her dying mother, whose ashen face and sunken eyes were almost unrecognizable to her now, she took her bony, grayish hand in her own. Memories of her early years with her mother washed over her, and she felt a lump in her throat as she remembered walking hand in hand through the emerald fields together, praying at bedtime, and listening to stories at her knee by the hearth. She had been there when Anna had married Patrick, when Sarah, her first granddaughter, was born, and when her husband had died. She shook her head at the tragedy of her mother not seeing Sarah grow up, at her life ending this way. It was inconceivable that the person who had always been there would momentarily never be there again. Anna despised the illness that was taking her mother—the pitiful body that lay before her that had barely subsisted day to agonizing day with no hope that potatoes or anything else would ever grow to feed them again.

Nauseated, Anna turned to run from the building, feeling she might need to retch. But before she had taken a first step, her mother’s eyes fluttered open and she whispered, Anna, Sarah, come closer. Keep something for me.

CHAPTER 3

A nna watched her mother fumble in her gown pocket as she pulled out a familiar-looking pale blue cotton pouch they had taken on walks together. Mary gently placed her thumb on her daughter’s palm.

Anna, keep this pouch with you always, and whenever you touch it, remember our walks in the meadows where we picked hayseeds.

I will. I’ll keep it with me forever, Anna sobbed. I wanted you to get well enough to go. How am I going to go without you?

I’m past getting well. You have to be strong and brave, as I know you can be. Take Sarah to America, and when you get there, you’ll have something to grow and remember me by.

Anna stared at her ashen-colored face lying against the stark white pillowcase. She hated the gray portent of imminent death, and though she was repulsed by the color, she suddenly clasped her ma’s hand and squeezed it with all her might. Anna watched a grim smile grow at the corners of her mother’s mouth and then her hand dropped onto the bedsheet. She nodded at her mother’s last words and heard her inhale her last breath.

No! Sarah yelled. Don’t go now. Her words echoed in her ears as they reverberated down the long hospital hallway past cot after cot of famine fever victims.

Sarah searched her grandma’s face, trying to understand something she did not think she’d ever understand. Death. Death of someone who had held her hand on walks through fields of daisies in springtime; of someone who had cradled her in her lap on cold winter nights by the hearth fire and related her own stories of growing up; of someone whose sweet kiss on her forehead felt like the light of a star shining brightly in the midnight blue sky. How was she going to live now without her touch, her voice, her kisses? The questions that had no answers shoved their way through her mind and panicked her, made her stomach turn inside out, upside down, and riveted her to the spot where she stood frozen by Grandma’s body. Ma’s gentle hand pressed her shoulder and gave her a jolt as she looked into her tear-streaked face.

Anna saw that her daughter’s grief mirrored her own. She wanted to protect the child from it but knew that was impossible. She hugged Sarah’s waist, squeezed her eyes shut, wishing to stay enveloped in the blackness. She lifted Sarah’s face to look at her and said stoically, We’ll do what your grandma wanted. Come now, let’s go home.

Sarah shook her head adamantly. No, I’m not leaving her here. We can’t leave her behind, Ma. Don’t you see?

Sarah looked beyond her mother at the rows of bodies that resembled skeletons waiting their turn for famine fever to deliver its final insult. She then saw a woman marching toward them dressed in a crisp white floor-length nurse’s dress, carrying a white sheet. Two men in white pants and shirts, carrying a canvas stretcher, followed on her heels. Sarah stared horrified as the woman and men stood on either side of Grandma’s cot and waited.

Anna didn’t move away and said through gritted teeth, Can’t you even let us mourn in peace for a moment before you perform your gruesome task? This woman was my mother, for God’s sake. She was this child’s grandmother.

The nurse ushered the men toward another body as she turned and whispered, I’m sorry for your grief, but we need this bed. I can only give you another moment.

Sarah hugged her ma as Anna prayed through a shaky voice, God rest her soul. God rest her and let her live in peace beside You and Patrick Laughlin in heaven.

Sarah was furious when she heard the prayer to a God who had done nothing to answer her prayers to save her da and grandma. What good was prayer now? Now that her family here consisted of only her ma, with no assurance that the heavy hand of God and scythe of famine fever hanging above their heads would not strike them down too.

Anna saw that the nurse and two orderlies had returned. She watched the nurse perfunctorily cover her mother’s body with the white sheet and the two men carry her on their stretcher toward the back door of the hospital. She saw the impression that her frail body had made on the sheet and remembered how helpless she had felt when her husband had died this way a year ago. The rage at the fever taking her family, one by one, shot through her, and she ground her teeth and pounded her fists into her palm. As she stared at the empty bed and knew she was powerless to stop the ravages of illness, she couldn’t help but feel that she should have been able to do something, anything, to stop the terrible trail of death that had mercilessly eliminated her family like a slow-burning cook fire that eventually turns to ashes. Even in her grief, she knew her rage was irrational against her helplessness and the inevitable.

As Sarah watched the two orderlies transfer another woman to what had been her grandma’s bed, she yelled at the nurse, No! This was her bed! Get away!

She felt her ma’s soothing hand rub her back as she whispered, I’m here with you, Sarah. I’m still here with you.

The nurse stopped and said with the perfunctory efficiency of someone immune to death’s blow, I’m sorry for your loss.

Anna watched them at the back door of the hospital with the body, hugged Sarah to her, and wept.

CHAPTER 4

APRIL 1848

A nna pulled her tattered shawl close around her shoulders as she led Sarah from the evening prayer service. The harsh April wind chilled her to the bone as she looked at the group of people huddled in front of the chapel’s black iron gate reading the monthly eviction notice she knew hung there. Since her mother’s death, she had escaped the wrath of their landlord who ruthlessly demanded rent from tenant farmers, and today, as she inched closer to the list, she begged God her name was not on it.

She nervously scanned the alphabetical list, gasped when she got to Laughlin printed in bold black letters. Sarah saw it too, and clung to her mother’s arm.

Anna moved away from the group and stared across the soggy green slopes stretching for miles beyond