David W. Barton, of Winchester, Virginia, emancipated many of his
slaves a short time prior to the Civil War. Some of these were sent to
Liberia, and others, who from age or youth were not regarded as equal
to the trials of the trip, were settled in this country. Robert T.
Barton, Esq., a son of the emancipator, in a letter to the author
bears testimony to the fact of the affection which subsisted between
the members of his father's family and these freedmen. "I was quite a
small boy at the time," he writes, "but I remember the incident
perfectly. I recall the weeping family that parted with these
servants, who were very dear to us."[96]
Traverse Herndon, of Fauquier, who died in 1854, by his last will
emancipated his slaves, some fifty in number, and made provision for
their transportation to Liberia. Two years later his brother, Thaddeus
Herndon, emancipated his slaves, some twenty in number, and the two
groups of freedmen, except such as were too old to bear the dangers of
the voyage and life in the new country, were sent to Liberia in the
fall of 1857, under the care of an agent of the American Colonization
Society.
The Rev. Charles T. Herndon, of Salem, Virginia, has furnished the
author with an account of the parting between these freedmen and his
father, Thaddeus Herndon, which occurred on board of the ship
"Euphrasia," written by the Rev. John Seys,[97] a former missionary to
Liberia, who was present on the occasion. The subjoined extract from
Mr. Seys' account of the separation, which was published soon
afterwards in the _Maryland Colonization Journal_, presents in the
most vivid manner the sorrow attending the parting of Thaddeus Herndon
and his former slaves, and the reverence and affection with which the
slaves of Traverse Herndon regarded their dead master.