Read Part One HERE
In this post I will focus on a woman named Amanda Berry Smith. She lived from 1837 - 1915. She was born a slave at Long Green, Maryland. Her father, a slave, worked for years at night and after long days of field labour, he made brooms and husk mats to earn enough money to buy the freedom of his family of seven.
The Berry family expanded to include eight more children, and they moved to a farm in York County, Pennsylvania, where their home became an Underground Railroad Station. Consequently their property was closely watched to see if they were harbouring fugitives. One night, slave trackers burst in, demanding to know where Amanda's father had hidden a runaway. The men beat Amanda's father and tried to stab her mother.
Amanda had only three months of formal education, and that at a school for whites, though a few coloured children were permitted to attend.
In 1854, at the age of seventeen, Amanda married Calvin Devine. The couple lived in New York City, and had two children, one of whom died in infancy. Amanda worked as a domestic servant, but life with Calvin, a drunkard, was fraught with misery.
Not long after the beginning of the Civil War, Calvin joined an African American unit in the Union Army. He was killed in battle in 1863. During this time, Amanda, always worked hard as a cook and a washerwoman to provide for herself and her daughter.
Amanda remarried a coachman named James Smith, and Philadelphia became her new home.She experienced a religious conversion, and joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She worshipped at the church where her husband was a deacon. However, Smith proved to be a disappointment as a husband, and the three children Amanda had with him died very young.
Read Part One Hundred And Sixty-Four HERE
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