belonged to the company. Twenty of these have been slaves, and three of the other four were of slave parentage. There is not room in this volume for even brief histories of all the twenty-four. Such have been selected as together give the truest idea of slavery as it was felt by the generation to which the Jubilee Singers belong; of the changes and difficulties to which emancipation introduced them; of the sympathy and assistance they need and deserve. The unembellished facts in the sketches that follow form a mosaic that brings out the dreadful pattern of slavery as no story or sermon could reproduce it.
Ella Sheppard was born in Nashville, in February, 1851. Her father, while a slave, had hired his own time, and earned enough, in carrying on a livery stable, to buy his freedom, for which he paid $1,800.
His wife was owned by a family living in Mississippi, and soon after Ella's birth she returned to that State. The mother was worked so hard that the baby could have little attention, and nearly died of neglect. When it was fifteen months old, the father heard that it was very sick and not likely live. Going at once to Mississippi, he bought his own child for $350, and took it, ill as it was, home with him to Nashville. Afterward he tried to buy his wife, but her master refused to sell her. By and by they were entirely separated from one another. By the usage of slavery she was dead to him, and he married again.
His second wife was also a slave, and he pur-
