Harriet Jacobs Research Paper

Harriet Ann Jacobs was born a slave in Edenton, North Carolina in 1813. Harriet Jacobs mother and father both passed away when she was a small child, then she and her younger brother, John, were both raised by their grandmother, Molly Horniblow. By then Jacobs had already learned to read, write and sew by Margaret Horniblow, the mistress. Jacobs would have high hopes in that being her ticket to freedom but when Margaret passed away be given in the will to Dr. James Norcom, and this would be a tough life of hardship due to the sexual and physical abuse Jacobs would have to endure. Jacobs was able to devise a plan to ward off his sexual advances and assaults by having an affair with a white lawyer named Samuel Treadwell Sawyer and bearing with him two children name Joseph (b.
1833-1913), but they would legally belong to Norcom. Because Jacobs was afraid of Norcom's constant sexual threats and hoping he might release the hold on her children, Jacobs hid in the storeroom crawlspace of her grandmother's house from 1835 until 1842. For seven years Jacobs would do more than sit up in the cramped up tight space, she would also read, sew, and carefully watch over her children from the roof, awaiting the perfect opportunity to get away to the North. When Jacobs was able to finally leave and work her way to New York City by boat in 1842 and was would be reunited with her kid. Although Jacobs was in New York, she would still be at the mercy of the Fugitive Slave Law, which meant no matter where she was in the United States she could be captured and returned to the Norcoms. It wasn’t until around 1852, that her employer, Cornelia Grinnell Willis, would purchase her