Soon after I removed to Syracuse, in 1845, I became acquainted with
the Rev. J. W. Loguen, then a school-teacher, and for several years
since minister of the African Methodist Church here. His personal
history is a remarkable one, revealing at times no little force
of character. He was born in Tennessee, the slave of an ignorant,
intemperate, and brutal slaveholder. He witnessed the sale of several
of his mother’s children, her frantic but unavailing resistance, the
horrible scourging she endured without releasing them from her embrace,
and her agonizing grief when they were at last violently torn from
her. Twice he was himself beaten nearly to death,--left bleeding and
senseless, to be comforted and brought back to life by the care of
his fond mother. At last he saw his sister (after a terrible fight
with the ruffian slave-traders to whom she had been sold) subdued,
manacled, and forced away, screaming for her children, imploring at
least that she might have her infant. He could endure his bondage no
longer. He resolved to escape to the land of the free, and there earn
the means and find the way to bring his mother to partake with him of
the blessings of liberty. He took his master’s best horse,--one that
he had trained to do great feats, if required,--and, in company with
another young slave of kindred spirit, also well mounted, he started,
on the night before Christmas, 1834, from the interior of Tennessee,
near Nashville, to go to Canada,--a distance of six hundred miles,
half the way through a slaveholding country. They encountered, as they
expected to do, fearful perils and exhausting hardships. At last they
reached a place of safety, but it was in the dead of a Canadian winter.
Their stock of provisions had long since been exhausted; their money
was all spent; their clothing utterly insufficient; and thus they had
come into a most inhospitable climate, unknowing and unknown, at a
season of the year when little employment was to be had. Undaunted by
this array of appalling circumstances, Mr. Loguen persevered, made
friends, got work, and in the spring of 1837, only three years after
his escape from slavery, had so commended himself to the confidence of
an employer that he was intrusted with a farm of two hundred acres,
near Hamilton, which he was to work on shares. Here, and afterwards
by labor in St. Catharine, he laid up several hundred dollars, and
then removed to Rochester, N. Y. In that city he obtained a situation
as waiter in the best hotel, where, by his aptness and readiness to
serve, he so ingratiated himself with all the boarders and transient
visitors that his perquisites amounted to more than enough to support
him, and being totally abstinent from the use of intoxicating liquors
and tobacco, he was able to lay up all his wages,--thirty dollars a
month. At the expiration of two years he found that, together with
what he had brought from Canada, he was possessed of about nine
hundred dollars. As much of this as might be necessary, he resolved
to expend in the acquisition of knowledge. Ever since his arrival at
the North he had availed himself of all the assistance he could get
to learn to read, and had attained to some proficiency in the art. By
plying this, whenever opportunity offered him the use of books and
newspapers, he had added much to his information. But he longed for
more education,--at least sufficient to enable him to be useful as a
minister of religion, or as a teacher of the children of his people. So
he left his lucrative situation in Rochester, and entered the Oneida
Institute, a manual labor school, then under the excellent management
of Rev. Beriah Green.
In 1841 Mr. Loguen came to reside in Syracuse, and undertook the duties
of pastor of the “African Methodist Church,” and of school-teacher to
the children of his people. In both these offices he was successful.
And not in these alone. With the help of one of the best of wives, he
has brought up a family of children, and educated them well. He has
established a good, commodious, hospitable home. In it was fitted up an
apartment for fugitive slaves, and, for years before the Emancipation
Act, scarcely a week passed without some one, in his flight from
slavedom to Canada, enjoyed shelter and repose at Elder Loguen’s. By
industry, frugality, and the skilful investment of his property, he has
gained a good estate. He is respected by his fellow-citizens, and has
so risen in the esteem of his Methodist brethren, that within the last
year he has been made a bishop of their order.