George White

Abstract

My mother was a slave, belonging to an estate in the township of Accomack, state of Virginia, where I was born in the fall of 1764: but at the age of one year and a half, was torn from her fond embraces, and carried by my owner into Esther county; where I was kept until six years of age; being treated with a degree of indulgence, uncommon to the children of Virginian slaves. However, about this time, my master, for reasons best known to himself, sold me to a person in Sommerset county state of Maryland; from whom I received much better treatment than is usual for Africans to meet with, in this land of human oppression and barbarity Here I continued in servitude, until the fifteenth year of my age; when I was again made merchandize of, sold, and sent into Suffolk; where I continued under all severities of the most abject slavery, till I arrived at the twenty-sixth year of my age.

As reading the account of the lives, and religious experience of others, has often quickened and comforted my own soul, and encouraged me in the way to heaven, I feel it my duty to present the friends of Jesus with a short detail of the dealings of God towards me; in my conversion, temptations, religious conflicts, call to preach, and sufferings therein; hoping to adminster some of those benefits to them, which I have derived from the writings of others on the same subject: to which I have subjoined with the same view, an account of the extraordinary death of two persons of my own acquaintance, the one very pious, and the other very wicked: as also some remarks on the subject of true happiness.

When I consider the station in which I am placed, and the obligations I am under, especially to my African brethren, I rejoice at every opportunity of facilitating their spiritual welfare and happiness. And should the present undertaking prove conducive thereto, the reader will do me the pleasure, to ascribe the honour and glory to God; while he enjoys the proposed benefit.

And that, whoever reads the following relation, may be blessed of God, and eternally saved in Jesus Christ, is the most affectionate and fervent prayer of their sincere friend and brother, in the kingdom and patience of Christ Jesus,

George White. New-York, April 10, 1810.