Image information: Living in a cave. Engraving shows Harry Grimes, a fugitive slave from North Carolina. During his 1857 escape. Grimes lived in the woods, taking shelter in a cave and a hollowed out poplar tree. Here, he builds a fire with some charcoal that he found.
This engraving of 1 of 3 created for William Still's Underground Railroad Record.

This is part of William Still, 1821-1902. Underground Rail Road.
Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1872.
Notes: Illustration in William Still's Underground Rail Road: a record of facts, authentic narratives, letters, &c. (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1872), p. 425. Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Resistance.
Creator: Bensell, Edmund Birckhead, b. 1842 engraver.

Source: Library Company of Philadelphia.
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Harry Grimes knew he had to be careful around his master, a North Carolina plantation owner, but sometimes there was no escaping Jesse Moore’s brutal punishments.

Grimes was eating dinner one day when Moore drunkenly walked up to him and asked why he wasn’t still working.

“I don’t know what to say,” Grimes told him.

Moore pulled a knife and stabbed Grimes in the neck, then got his shotgun and told his overseer to get a rope. Grimes knew he was going to be strung up and cut to pieces. He asked Moore to shoot him instead.

“Go,” Moore said in a rage, seemingly inviting Grimes to run before training both barrels on his slave.

Grimes ran, and Moore and the overseer unleashed dogs and mounted horses. But Grimes fed the dogs regularly, and they liked him. They didn’t give chase, and he was able to escape.

Moore flew into a rage.

“The devil was into him, and he flogged and beat four of the slaves, one man and three of the women, and said if he could only get hold of me he wouldn’t strike me, ‘nary-a-lick,’ but would tie me to a tree and empty both barrels into me,” Grimes later said.
For the next seven months, Grimes lived in a hollow tree, likely in the southern end of the Great Dismal Swamp.

One night, a deadly poplar leaf moccasin slithered into his tree, and Grimes had to chop it up with his ax.

After that, he lived in a cave for a while.

Grimes likely made his way through the swamp and the canals cut into it to Norfolk and Portsmouth. He eventually hid on a boat and made it to Delaware.

There, abolitionists that took down his account described him as worn and nearly naked, but ready to tell his tale.

Grimes told them he had a wife and family on a plantation near Moore’s. He’d escaped once before and hid in the woods for more than two years. That time, too, he’d had no choice. Moore had planned to kill him for walking the 5 miles to see his family without permission.

He had eight children and remembered their names, though the youngest, Rosetta, he’d never seen.

No one knows whether Grimes ever got a chance to meet her.

Source: The Virginia Pilot News - Enslaved and Escaped Series - This story was recounted in narrative form using a range of sources. Cassandra Newby-Alexander, a professor of history and director of the Joseph Jenkins Roberts Center for the Study of the African Diaspora at Norfolk State University, deserves special thanks for doing much of the research that serves as the backbone of this tale. She also was interviewed for the series, as were Robert B. Hitchings, former head archivist and historian, Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library; Troy Valos, a researcher at the Sargeant Memorial Collection; Delores Freeman, visitor services specialist at the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge and Bill Barker, archivist at The Mariners’ Museum.
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Harry Grimes personal account to William Still - From William Still's Underground Railroad Record Book

Arrival from North Carolina, 1857
HARRY GRIMES, GEORGE UPSHER, AND EDWARD LEWIS.

FEET SLIT FOR RUNNING AWAY, FLOGGED, STABBED, STAYED IN THE HOLLOW OF A BIG POPLAR TREE, VISITED BY A SNAKE, ABODE IN A CAVE. The coming of the passengers here noticed was announced in the subjoined letter from Thomas Garrett:

WILMINGTON, 11th Mo. 25th, 1857.

RESPECTED FRIEND, WILLIAM STILL:—I write to inform thee, that Captain Fountain has arrived this evening from the South with three men, one of which is nearly naked, and very lousy. He has been in the swamps of Carolina for eighteen months past. One of the others has been some time out. I would send them on to-night, but will have to provide two of them with some clothes before they can be sent by rail road. I have forgotten the number of thy house. As most likely all are more or less lousy, having been compelled to sleep together, I thought best to write thee so that thee may get a suitable place to take them to, and meet them at Broad and Prime streets on the arrival of the cars, about 11 o’clock to-morrow evening. I have engaged one of our men to take them to his house, and go to Philadelphia with them to-morrow evening. Johnson who will accompany them is a man in whom we can confide. Please send me the number of thy house when thee writes.

THOMAS GARRETT.

This epistle from the old friend of the fugitive, Thomas Garrett, excited unusual interest. Preparation was immediately made to give the fugitives a kind reception, and at the same time to destroy their plagues, root and branch, without mercy.

They arrived according to appointment. The cleansing process was carried into effect most thoroughly, and no vermin were left to tell the tale of suffering they had caused. Straightway the passengers were made comfortable in every way, and the spirit of freedom seemed to be burning like “fire shut up in the bones.” The appearance alone of these men indicated their manhood, and wonderful natural ability. The examining Committee were very desirous of hearing their story without a moment’s delay.

As Harry, from having suffered most, was the hero of this party, and withal was an intelligent man, he was first called upon to make his statement as to how times had been with him in the prison house, from his youth up. He was about forty-six years of age, according to his reckoning, full six feet high, and in muscular appearance was very rugged, and in his countenance were evident marks of firmness. He said that he was born a slave in North Carolina, and had been sold three times.

He was first sold when a child three years of age, the second time when he was thirteen years old, and the third and last time he was sold to Jesse Moore, from whom he fled. Prior to his coming into the hands of Moore he had not experienced any very hard usage, at least nothing more severe than fell to the common lot of slave-boys, therefore the period of his early youth was deemed of too little interest to record in detail. In fact time only could be afforded for noticing very briefly some of the more remarkable events of his bondage. The examining Committee confined their interrogations to his last taskmaster.

“How did Moore come by you?” was one of the inquiries. “He bought me,” said Harry, “of a man by the name of Taylor, nine or ten years ago; he was as bad as he could be, couldn’t be any worse to be alive. He was about fifty years of age, when I left him, a right red-looking man, big bellied old fellow, weighs about two hundred and forty pounds. He drinks hard, he is just like a rattlesnake, just as cross and crabbed when he speaks, seems like he could go through you. He flogged Richmond for not ploughing the corn good, that was what he pretended to whip him for. Richmond ran away, was away four months, as nigh as I can guess, then they cotched him, then struck him a hundred lashes, and then they split both feet to the bone, and split both his insteps, and then master took his knife and stuck it into him in many places; after he done him that way, he put him into the barn to shucking corn. For a long time he was not able to work; when he did partly recover, he was set to work again.”

We ceased to record anything further concerning Richmond, although not a fourth part of what Harry narrated was put upon paper. The account was too sickening and the desire to hear Harry’s account of himself too great to admit of further delay; so Harry confined himself to the sufferings and adventures which had marked his own life. Briefly he gave the following facts: “I have been treated bad. One day we were grubbing and master said we didn’t do work enough. ‘How came there was no more work done that day?’ said master to me. I told him I did work. In a more stormy manner he ‘peated the question. I then spoke up and said: ‘Massa, I don’t know what to say.’ At once massa plunged his knife into my neck causing me to stagger.

Massa was drunk. He then drove me down to the black folk’s houses (cabins of the slaves). He then got his gun, called the overseer, and told him to get some ropes. While he was gone I said, ‘Massa, now you are going to tie me up and cut me all to pieces for nothing. I would just as leave you would take your gun and shoot me down as to tie me up and cut me all to pieces for nothing.’ In a great rage he said ‘go.’ I jumped, and he put up his gun and snapped both barrels at me. He then set his dogs on me, but as I had been in the habit of making much of them, feeding them, &c. they would not follow me, and I kept on straight to the woods. My master and the overseer cotched the horses and tried to run me down, but as the dogs would not follow me they couldn’t make nothing of it. It was the last of August a year ago.

The devil was into him, and he flogged and beat four of the slaves, one man and three of the women, and said if he could only get hold of me he wouldn’t strike me, ‘nary-a-lick,’ but would tie me to a tree and empty both barrels into me.

In the woods I lived on nothing, you may say, and something too. I had bread, and roasting ears, and ‘taters. I stayed in the hollow of a big poplar tree for seven months; the other part of the time I stayed in a cave. I suffered mighty bad with the cold and for something to eat. Once I got me some charcoal and made me a fire in my tree to warm me, and it liked to killed me, so I had to take the fire out. One time a snake come to the tree, poked its head in the hollow and was coming in, and I took my axe and chopped him in two. It was a poplar leaf moccasin, the poisonest kind of a snake we have. While in the woods all my thoughts was how to get away to a free country.”

Subsequently, in going back over his past history, he referred to the fact, that on an occasion long before the cave and tree existence, already noticed, when suffering under this brutal master, he sought protection in the woods and abode twenty-seven months in a cave, before he surrendered himself, or was captured. His offence, in this instance, was simply because he desired to see his wife, and “stole” away from his master’s plantation and went a distance of five miles, to where she lived, to see her.

For this grave crime his master threatened to give him a hundred lashes, and to shoot him; in order to avoid this punishment, he escaped to the woods, etc. The lapse of a dozen years and recent struggles for an existence, made him think lightly of his former troubles and he would, doubtless, have failed to recall his earlier conflicts but for the desire manifested by the Committee to get all the information out of him they could.

He was next asked, “Had you a wife and family?” “Yes, sir,”. he answered, “I had a wife and eight children, belonged to the widow Slade.” Harry gave the names of his wife and children as follows: Wife, Susan, and children, Oliver, Sabey, Washington, Daniel, Jonas, Harriet, Moses and Rosetta, the last named he had never seen. “Between my mistress and my master there was not much difference.”
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