page_title: Harriet Jacobs
section_title: Escape and freedom
hierarchical_section_title: Harriet Jacobs / Biography / Escape and freedom
caption_attribution_description: English: View of the city of Boston from Dorchester heights / painted &amp; engraved by Robt. Havell&#160;; coloured by Havell &amp; Spearing. Print shows a distant view of Boston with ships in the harbor, the "Worcester Rail Road" on the left, the "Lowell Rail Road" on the right, and the Bunker Hill monument in the middle background. Aquatint, color, C size. New York&#160;: Published by Robt. Havell, 172 Fulton St., c1841 (Printed by W. Neale)
context_page_description: Harriet Jacobs was an African-American writer. Born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina, she was sexually harassed by her master. When he threatened to sell her children, she hid in a tiny crawlspace under the roof of her grandmother's house, where she wasn't even able to stand. After staying there for seven years, she finally managed to escape to New York, where she was reunited with her children Joseph and Louisa Matilda and her brother John S. Jacobs. She found work as a nanny for the children of Nathaniel Parker Willis and got into contact with abolitionist and feminist reformers. Her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861, is now considered an "American classic".
  During and immediately after the Civil War, she went to the Union-occupied parts of the South together with her daughter, organizing help and founding two schools for fugitive and freed slaves.
context_section_description: In 1842, Jacobs finally got a chance to escape by boat to Philadelphia, where she was aided by anti-slavery activists of the Philadelphia Vigilant Committee. After a short stay, she continued to New York City. Although she had no references, Mary Stace Willis, the wife of the then extremely popular author Nathaniel Parker Willis, accepted to hire Jacobs as the nanny of her baby daughter Imogen. The two women agreed on a trial period of one week, not suspecting that the relationship between the two families would last into the next generation, until the death of Louisa Matilda Jacobs at the home of Edith Willis Grinnell, the daughter of Nathaniel Willis and his second wife, in 1917.
  In 1843 Jacobs heard that Norcom was on his way to New York to force her back into slavery, which was legal for him to do everywhere inside the United States. She asked Mary Willis for a leave of two weeks and went to her brother John in Boston. John Jacobs, in his capacity as personal servant, had accompanied his owner Sawyer on his marriage trip through the North in 1838. He had gained his freedom by leaving his master in New York. After that he had gone whaling and had been absent for more than three years. From Boston, Harriet Jacobs wrote to her grandmother asking her to send Joseph there, so that he could live there with his uncle John. After Joseph's arrival, she returned to her work as Imogen Willis's nanny.
  Her work with the Willis family came to an abrupt end in October 1843, when Jacobs learned that her whereabouts had been betrayed to Norcom. Again, she had to flee to Boston, which where the strength of the abolitionist movement guaranteed a certain level of security. Moving to Boston also gave her the opportunity to take her daughter Louisa Matilda from the house of Sawyer's cousin in Brooklyn, where she had been treated not much better than a slave.
  In Boston Jacobs took on odd jobs. Her stay there was interrupted by the death of Mary Stace Willis in March 1845. Nathaniel Willis took his daughter Imogen on a ten-month visit to the family of his deceased wife in England. For the journey, Jacobs resumed her job as nanny. In her autobiography, she reflects on the experiences made during the journey: She didn't notice any sign of racism, which often embittered her life in the USA. In consequence of this, she gained a new access to her Christian faith. At home, Christian ministers treating blacks with contempt or even buying and selling slaves had been an obstacle to her spiritual life.
caption: Boston in 1841
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