CHAPTER XI.
PERSONAL HISTORIES CONCLUDED.
Thomas Rutling's early home was in Wilson County,
Tennessee, where he was born in 1854. His father
was sold away before his birth, and his family never
heard from him afterward. His mother was in the
habit of running away and hiding in the woods, in
the hope of escaping from slavery. But it was never
very long before she would be found, brought back,
flogged, and set to work again. Whippings, however,
proved of no avail, and she was finally sold and
sent further south. Tom was then but two or three
years old, and his earliest recollection is of parting
with his mother—how he stood on the doorsteps as
she kissed him and bade him good-bye, and how she
cried as they dragged her away from her children.
Two or three years afterward his mistress told him
one day, as he was playing around the house, that
they had heard from his mother. She had been
whipped almost to death, probably for another attempt
to obtain her freedom; and that was the last
he has ever heard from her. He had an older
brother and several sisters. Some of them were
