are philosophy of Negro history than of accurate records of
events--facts, facts, facts!

I have conversed with a number of elderly colored men and women
in this city who have a wonderful fund of recollection of
interesting and valuable historical data never in print. There
are such people everywhere. Some cannot write, others will not
write. If discriminating chroniclers are encouraged to write down
the stories of such people for publication in your Journal, the
result should be fruitful.

I congratulate you on the average excellence of the subjects
covered by the Journal and the scholarly editing thereof.

Yours very sincerely,
(Signed) R. C. EDMONSON.

DR. CARTER G. WOODSON,
Editor, _Journal of Negro History_.

SOME UNDISTINGUISHED NEGROES

FRED FOWLER

Fred Fowler was born about 1832 in Frederick County, Maryland. His
first master, Michael Reel, had a farm and a flour mill about four
miles from Frederick City. Reel owned sixteen slaves, among whom were
Fred's mother and her eight children. Fred's father belonged to a man
named Doyle, who had an adjoining farm. Doyle sold the father to a man
named Fisher, who subsequently put up the first gas factory in
Frederick.

On the death of Michael Reel, in 1847, his estate had to be divided.
Some of the slaves were disposed of according to appraisement, others
at auction. Fred, then about fifteen years old, was taken at the
appraised value of $400 by a son of the deceased Reel. If auctioned
off, he thought he might have brought somewhat more.

At this sale his mother and one child were bought for $500 by a man
named Todd, who subsequently sold her to Dr. Shipley. Four children
were purchased by men supposed to be traders, who presumably took them
to Georgia, which, according to the sentiment of "Nellie Gray," was
the slave's notion of some far-away place where the speculators found
a market. No one of these four was ever seen or heard from after they
were put on the train for Baltimore. The other children, two sisters,
were taken away by a man named Roach, but that was all that was then
known. The almost invariable rule in the inter-state slave-trade was
that separation ended all communication with those left behind. In
1887--forty years after the sale--these sisters wrote a letter to a
colored church in Frederick asking