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Travels in Some Parts of North America, in the Years 1804, 1805, & 1806, by Robert Sutcliff

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the black people in that neighbourhood. He had been an ardent and steady friend to that oppressed race, and the means of rescuing many of them from a state of slavery, who had been cruelly forced into bondage, by a set of unprincipled men, from Georgia, who sometimes hover about this part of the Delaware State and Mary- land, and carry off whole families of free Negroes in the night. They take them on board small vessels, in the neighbouring creeks, and so ship them off to Georgia and the Carolinas, where they are sold to the planters. I have seen several of the black people whom he had rescued and sent up to his brother-in-law, Henry Bowman. The latter had procured them situations in the interior of Pennsylvania, out of the reach of these barbarous men. Not long ago, a mother, with seven children, was thus carried off, in the dead of the night, from this neighbour- hood. This flagrant act deeply excited J. Row- land's attention; and, after riding nearly one thou- sand miles, he was enabled to rescue the whole family, and bring them safe home to their native place, although they had been dispersed and sold into various hands, by the kidnappers, in different parts of Georgia. A very short time back, this excellent young man was taken ill of a fever, which, notwith- standing every help was afforded him, made so