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Remembering the life of a Kentucky slave who became a famous author, abolitionist

In Bibb's book, he told his story of survival and how he helped others to freedom.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — In the 1800s, one enslaved man escaped to become part of a large legacy of Kentuckians fighting for freedom. That man's name is Henry Bibb. 

Bibb was born somewhere between 1812 and 1815 on an Oldham County plantation. Because he was enslaved, there is no paperwork to give an exact date. He had six brothers and was raised by his mother. 

According to his autobiography, Bibb was first inspired to escape when he was a young teenager, after being sold to a particularly abusive slaveowner.

“Henry had a way of running away, he was known as that," Nancy Theiss, executive director of the Oldham County History Center, said.

At the time, Oldham and Trimble were part of the same county. Theiss said about 1/3 of the county was enslaved. Because of its location on the Ohio River, there was a lot of slave activity. That history is archived at the Oldham History Center in LaGrange. 

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“So, as I came here and started looking at the records, I began to realize that this had to be a place where people would have escaped from, and we came across a man named Henry Bibb,” Theiss said. 

After some research, Theiss found Bibb was a slave who found a way to tell his own story. 

“We found Henry Bibb's book," she said. "He was very specific about people who enslaved him, and where he lived and where he met his wife. We just followed the trail.”

Bibb did not go to school, but he still found a way to learn. 

“He tells that he was first purchased by this family, a white family that had a little girl. He was sort of her playmate. He would listen to her school lessons. He learned to read and write just by being there,” Theiss said. 

He did find love with a woman by the name of Mary Francis, but her slave master did not allow them to marry. However, they did have a daughter by the name of Melinda. 

With word of the Underground Railroad and dreams of freedom, Bibb planned his getaway. 

Theiss said Bibb left in 1837 to explore what that would be like. He jumped on a boat in Madison, where he was supposed to be working.

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When he returned to get his family, Bibb was recaptured. The family was later separated. Years later, he escaped again and remarried settling in Canada. He continued to fight for his freedom working with some of the most notable names in history. 

“Well, he knew Frederick Douglass. There was a circuit of abolitionists, like Harriet Tubman, they would go and speak at all these different places, anti-slave societies and the abolitionist societies, they had conventions,” Theiss said. 

Before Bibb's death in 1854 at the age of 39, he published The Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb. He also created one of Canada's earliest Black newspapers, "The Voice of the Fugitive," that was directed toward freedom seekers and Black refugees in the U.S. 

He was also a founding director of a Canadian Black colonization project called The Refugee Home Society, which helped aid hundreds of slaves settling in Canada.

“He was just a really wonderful man who believed in freedom," Theiss said. "He put his life on the line many, many times. He prized democracy, was the center of his soul, just to be able to be who he was.”

Henry Bibb was emancipated in 1842, meaning he was set free after the death of his owner. He lived out his life in Canada, which was viewed as a safe haven, where he could live free.

►Contact WHAS11’s Sherlene Shanklin at sshanklin@whas11.com or follow her on FacebookTwitter, or Instagram.

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