Isabella was the youngest of ten children, or perhaps twelve. She was born in 1797, or perhaps 1799.No one bothered to record the details of her early life because she was a slave. We do know that she was born in Ulster County, New York, and that her owner was Colonel Ardinburgh, a Dutch farmer. He grew tobacco, corn, and flax. Because the rocky hills west of the Hudson River could not sustain large farms, he sold most of the slave children.
Isabella's mother told her of the time when Ardinburgh had gathered up her five-year-old brother and three-year-old sister to take them for a sleigh ride. They were delighted, but when he tried to lock them into a box, her brother broke free, ran into the house and hid under a bed. Both children were dragged away. Isabella never saw them again.
When Ardinburgh died in 1807, his heirs sold his "slaves, horses, and other cattle"at auction. A local farmer of English descent bought Isabella for $100. Isabella's parents, too old and decrepit to do much work, were given their freedom. Destitute, they soon died.
Isabella, who spoke only Dutch, found herself at odds with her new English master and family. "If they sent me for a frying pan, not knowing what they meant, perhaps I carried them the pot hooks,"she recalled."Then, oh! How angry mistress would be with me."Once, for failing to obey an order she did not understand, her master whipped her with a bundle of rods, scar-ring her back permanently.
In 1810 she was sold to John Dumont, a farmer. Though she came to regard him "as a God,"she claimed that his wife subjected her to cruel and "unnatural"treatment. What exactly transpired, she refused "from motives of delicacy"to say. Historian Nell I. Painter contends that the mistress likely abused her sexually.
Sojourner Truth
In 1815 Dumont arranged for Isabella to marry another of his slaves. (Slave marriages were recognized by law in most northern states.) Isabella had no say in the matter. She had five children by him.
Isabella labored in the fields, sowing and harvesting crops. She also cooked and cleaned the house. In recognition of her diligence, Dumont promised to set her free on July 4,1826, exactly one year prior to the date set by the New York State legislature to end slavery. But on the proposed date of liberation, Dumont reneged. Soon thereafter Isabella heard the voice of God tell her to leave. She picked up her baby and walked to the house of Isaac Van Wagenen, a neighbor. When Dumont showed up to bring her back, Van Wagenen paid him $25 for Isabella and the baby and set them free. In gratitude, Isabella took the surname Van Wagenen.
But Isabella learned that her five-year-old son, Peter, had been sold to a planter in Alabama, which had no provision for ending slavery. She angrily confronted the Dumonts, who scoffed at her concern for "a paltry nigger.""I'll have my child again,"Isabella retorted. She consulted with a Quaker lawyer, who assured her that New York law forbade such sales. He filed suit in her behalf and won. In 1828 the boy was returned.
Now on her own, Isabella went to New York City, then awash in religious ferment. Isabella, whose views on religion were a complex amalgam of African folkways, spiritualism, temperance, and dietary asceticism, was attracted to various unorthodox religious leaders. The most curious of these was Robert Matthews, a bearded, thundering tyrant who claimed to be the Old Testament prophet Matthias. He proposed to restore the practices of the ancient patriarchs, especially men's subjugation of women. Matthews acquired a house in the town of Sing Sing, named it Mount Zion, housed nearly a dozen converts, and ruled it with an iron hand. Isabella was among those who joined the commune. In 1834, local authorities, who had heard stories of sexual and other irregularities at Mount Zion, arrested Matthews. Isabella then gravitated to William Miller, a zealot who claimed that the world would end in 1843.When it did not, his movement did.
Although she had nearly always been subject to the authority of powerful men, Isabella had by this time become a preacher. Tall and severe in manner, she jabbed at the air with bony fingers and demanded the obedience she had formerly given to others. She changed her name to Sojourner Truth, a messenger conveying God's true spirit, and embarked on a career of antislavery feminism.
World History
