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Who Was Josiah Henson?
Born in 1789 in Maryland to enslaved parents, Josiah Henson lived in slavery until 1830. For most of that time, he worked and lived on the Isaac Riley plantation, where he sustained humiliation, deprivation, and crippling violence. After a life of extraordinary hardship, Henson escaped to Canada, then published his memoir (or life story) in 1849. His story inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 abolitionist novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. |