a disadvantage to me since that time.

My aunt was rich in her own right. My uncle Conner was poor; he
drank and gambled and wasted her fortune; she in return give him
blixen all the time. The more she scolded, the worse he acted,
until they would fight like cats and dogs. Between them I was
treated worse than an African slave. I lived in the family eight
years, and can safely say I got a whipping every day I was there.

My aunt was more like a savage than a civilized woman. In her
anger she generally took her revenge upon those around her who
were the least to blame. She would strike with anything she could
obtain with which to work an injury. I have been knocked down and
beaten by her until I was senseless, scores of times, and carry
many scars on my person, the result of harsh usage by her.

When I was sixteen years old I concluded to leave my aunt's house
- I cannot call it home; my friends advised me to do so. I walked
one night to Kaskaskia; went to Robert Morrison and told him my
story. He was a mail contractor. He clothed me comfortably, and
sent me over the Mississippi River into Missouri, to carry the
mail from St. Genevieve to Pinckney, on the north side of the
Missouri River, via Potosie, a distance of one hundred and
twenty-seven miles. It was a weekly mail. I was to receive seven
dollars a month for my services. This was in December, 1828. It
was a severe winter; snow unusually deep and roads bad. I was
often until two o'clock at night in reaching my stations. In the
following spring I came near losing my life on several occasions
when swimming the streams, which were then generally over their
banks. The Meramec was the worst stream I had to cross, but I
escaped danger, and gave satisfaction to my employer.

All I know of my father, after I was eight years of age, is that
he went to Texas in the year 1820, and I have never heard of him
since. What his fate was I never knew. When my mother died my
uncle and aunt Conner took all the property - a large tract of
land, several slaves, household and kitchen furniture, and all;
and, as I had no guardian, I never received any portion of the
property. The slaves were set free by an act of the Legislature;
the land was sold for taxes, and was hardly worth redeeming when
I came of age; so I sold my interest in all the land that had
belonged to my mother, and made a quit-claim deed of it to Sidney
Breeze, a lawyer of Kaskaskia, in consideration of two hundred
do