* * * * *

“I never realized what a blessing it is to be free until I saw that scared man and woman crawling out from under the dusty hay and shaking themselves like a pair of dogs.  The weather was not cold or I guess they would have been frozen.  They knelt together on the barn floor and the woman prayed for God’s protection through the day.  I knew what slavery must mean when I saw what they were suffering to get away from it.  When they came in the night I felt the call of God to help them.  Now I knew that I was among the chosen to lead in a great struggle.  Peasley brought food for them and stowed them away on the top of his hay mow with a pair of buffalo skins.  I suppose they got some sleep there.  I went into the house to breakfast and while I ate Brimstead told me about his trip.  His children were there.  They looked clean and decent.  He lived in a log cabin a little further up the road.  Mrs. Peasley’s sister waited on me.  She is a fat and cheerful looking lady, very light complected.  Her hair is red—­like tomato ketchup.  Looks to me a likely, stout armed, good hearted woman who can do a lot of hard work.  She can see a joke and has an answer handy every time.”

* * * * *

For details of the remainder of the historic visit of Samson Traylor to the home of John Peasley we are indebted to a letter from John to his brother Charles, dated February 21, 1832.  In this he says: 

* * * * *

“We had gone out to the barn and Brimstead and I were helping Mr. Traylor hitch up his horses.  All of a sudden two men came riding up the road at a fast trot and turned in and come straight toward us and pulled up by the wagon.  One of them was a slim, red cheeked young feller about twenty-three years old.  He wore top boots and spurs and a broad brimmed black hat and gloves and a fur waistcoat and purty linen.  He looked at the tires of the wagon and said:  ‘That’s the one we’ve followed.’

“‘Which o’ you is Samson Traylor?’ he asked.

“‘I am,’ said Traylor.

“The young feller jumped off his horse and tied him to the fence.  Then he went up to Traylor and said: 

“What did you do with my niggers, you dirty sucker?’

“Men from Missouri hated the Illinois folks them clays and called ’em Suckers.  We always call a Missouri man a name too dirty to be put in a letter.  He acted like one o’ the Roman emperors ye read of.

“‘Hain’t you a little reckless, young feller?’ Traylor says, as cool as a cucumber.

“I didn’t know Traylor them days.  If I had, I’d ‘a’ been prepared for what was comin’.

“Traylor stood up nigh the barn door, which Brimstead had closed after we backed the wagon out.