Hard Choices

archieclement

Colonel
Joined
Sep 17, 2011
Location
mo
Found this account interesting, If anyone has additional details to provide it would great.

In 1849 Sophia and Charles Hamilton were traveling by river to his new posting, The numerous delays as the boat stuck on sandbars and stopped for passengers lengthened the journey from Cincinnati on the Ohio down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Arkansas to more then four weeks. The food was so bad she could not eat, which stopped the flow of her milk. Desperate, she and her husband, despite their anti slavery views, bought a slave to wet nurse their child, and this saved the baby. Their fear of cholera made the inconveniences on the boat seem petty and heightened their fears for the child's health. On the rivers and later on the overland leg of the journey to Fort Towson, she kept close eye on her rocking chair, carpet, and four trunks, with which she would have to set up housekeeping at the frontier post.

They had orginally started from Buffalo NY. It doesn't say what eventually happened to the slave.
 
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