Kidnapped Boys
by
In the days when our country belonged to England, white people were brought here to be sold. Some of these were poor people who could not get a good living in England. They came over to this country without any money. The captain of the ship in which they came sold them in this country to pay their passage.
Men and women who were sold had to serve four years; and boys and girls, a longer time. The person sold was just like a slave until his time was out. The man who had bought him might beat him, or sell him to another master. Many of these white slaves did not get enough to eat.
Here are some stories of boys who were brought to this country and sold before the Revolution. They are all true stories.
THE STORY OF PETER WILLIAMSON.–TWICE A SLAVE.
One day a boy named Peter Williamson was walking along the streets of Aberdeen in Scotland. The little fellow was eight years old. Two men met him, and asked him to go on board a ship with them. When he got on board, he was put down in the lower part of the ship with other boys. The ship sailed to America with twenty boys. Like Peter, the other lads had been stolen from their parents. They were taken to Philadelphia and sold, to work for seven years.
Little Peter was lucky enough to fall into the hands of a kind master. Among those who came to buy boys off this ship was a man who had himself been stolen from Scotland when he was young. He felt sorry for little Peter when he saw him put up for sale. The price the cruel captain asked for him was about fifty dollars. The Scotchman paid this money, and took Peter for his boy. He sent him to school in the winter, and treated him kindly. Peter, for his part, was a good boy, and did his work faithfully. He staid with his master after his time was out.
When Peter was about seventeen years old, this good master died. He left to Peter about six hundred dollars in money for being a good boy. He also gave him his best horse and saddle and all his own clothes. Some years after this, Peter married, and went to live in the northern part of Pennsylvania. He was by this time a man of property.
One night, when his wife was away from home, the Indians came about his house. He got a gun and ran upstairs. He pointed the gun at the Indians, but they told him that if he would not shoot they would not kill him. So he came down, and gave himself up as a prisoner.
The Indians treated him very cruelly. He was with them more than a year. His sufferings were so great that he wished sometimes that he was dead. He knew that if he ran away the Indians would probably catch him, and kill him in some cruel way. But one night, when the Indians were all asleep, he resolved to take the risk. You may believe that when he had started he ran with all his might.
When daylight came, he hid himself in a hollow tree. After a while he heard the Indians running all about the tree. He could hear them tell one another how they would kill him when they found him. But they did not think to look into the tree.
The next night he ran on again. He came very near running into a camp of Indians. But at last he came in sight of the house of a friend. He was tired out, and starving. He had hardly any clothes left on him. He knocked at the door. The woman who saw him thought that he was an Indian. She screamed, and the man of the house got his gun to kill him. But he quickly told his friend that he was no Indian, but Peter Williamson. Everybody had given him up for dead. But now all his friends were happy to see him alive once more. He had twice been carried into slavery,–once by cruel white men, and once by yet more cruel red men.