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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 leg-
islature 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 author-
ities, 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.I
sabella 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.
AMERICAN LIVES
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner TruthQuestions for Discussion
■In what ways did Sojourner Truth’s life likely differ from
that of a slave on a plantation in the Deep South?
■Religion helped some slaves reconcile themselves to
their fleeting miseries on earth. How did religion con-
tribute to Sojourner Truth’s self-empowerment?