Credit: NYPL digital gallery, New York Public Library
Only six years old when his family fled Maryland for freedom in Pennsylvania, Peter Still toiled in slavery for forty years before saving enough money to purchase his own freedom. With only the knowledge of his parents' first names, Peter traveled to Philadelphia in search of his family. There, one of the first men he told his story to turned out to be his brother, William Still, who then resolved to record the stories of other slaves who fled from the South.
