Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an autobiography composed by Harriet Jacobs. Her story is excruciating, and she would prefer to have kept it hidden, however, she feels that unveiling it might help the antislavery movement. The preface by abolitionist Lydia Maria Child expresses that the events it records are valid. Linda hides in the attic crawl space of her grandma, Auntie Martha. She hopes Dr. Flint will sell her kids rather than risk having them disappear as well. The more she remains in her minuscule garret, the more physically debilitated she becomes.After spending seven years in the attic, Linda finally escapes toward the North by boat. She looks for employment as a nursemaid for a New York City family, the Bruces. The book closes with two testimonials to its precision, one from Amy Post and the other from George W. Lowther.
Jacobs' autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pen name of Brent, is viewed as an "American classic". Born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina, she was physically harassed by her enslaver. After escaping to the free North, she looked for employment as a nanny and got into contact with abolitionists and women's activist reformers.Harriet Jacobs was born to a North Carolina slaveholding family in 1813. Harriet used the chance of the baptism of her kids to enroll Jacobs as their family name. She enlisted Jacobs as their family name after escaping from slavery. Her father, Henry Jacobs was a free white man. Harriet was six years old when her mother died, her dad married a free African American.Norcom soon began harassing Jacobs sexually, because of the jealousy of his wife. When Jacobs fell in love with a free person who wanted to buy her freedom and wed her, Norcom intervened and precluded her to go on with the relationshipShe fell in love with Samuel Sawyer, a white legal counselor, and a member of North Carolina's white elite, who might a few years after the fact be chosen for the House of Representatives. Sawyer became the dad of Jacobs' children, Joseph (born 1829/30) and Louisa Matilda (1832/33). Norcom prohibited her to get back to her home, which empowered Jacobs to reside with her grandma.Harriet Jacobs died on March 7, 1897, in Washington, D.C., and she was buried next to her brother at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. Her gravestone reads, "Patient in tribulation, fervent in spirit serving the Lord".
