A Crafty Escape

A Crafty Escape

Introduction Dressing up as someone else can be fun. Now imagine that your life depends on how well you play that part. Years ago, the Crafts did just that. They pretended to be different people to escape from slavery in the South.

Born into Slavery William and Ellen Craft were black Americans born into slavery. William was born in 1824 and lived in Macon, Georgia. His family was owned by a man who liked to gamble. When the man lost a bet, he got money to pay it by selling his slaves. William was sold when he was sixteen years old. He was a skilled carpenter. The new owner saw that William did good work. He let William make things to earn money for him. Ellen was two years younger than William. Her mother was a slave and her father a white slaveholder. Ellen's skin was so light that many people didn't realize she had a slave mother. When Ellen was eleven, she was " given" to her married half sister to work as a servant. When the half sister moved to Macon, Ellen went with them. There she met William.

A Decision Fueled by Love In time, William and Ellen fell in love. They wanted to be together. Getting married, however, was not easy for slaves. They needed their owners' permission to wed. If married slaves had different owners, the couple could not live together. In 1846, Ellen and William got permission and were married. For two years, the Crafts lived apart. They could see each other only once in a while. They worried that one of them could be sold at any time and sent far away.

The Crafts knew that the only way they could live as a family would be to escape to the North. Black people could live freely in states there. But how could the Crafts leave without being caught? William had a clever plan.

Preparing and Planning William's idea was a daring one. They would travel to Pennsylvania, the nearest free state. Since Ellen's skin was so light, she would pretend to be a white person. William could travel with her as her house servant. There was just one problem-Ellen could not travel as a woman. Women of that time did not travel alone. They certainly didn't travel with a male slave! There was only one way their plan would work. Ellen had to pretend to be a white man.