The Moravian ladies (Mrs. Richter, Mrs. Olufsen, and Mrs. Sauter) taught me to read in the class; and I got on very fast.  In this class there were all sorts of people, old and young, grey headed folks and children; but most of them were free people.  After we had done spelling, we tried to read in the Bible.  After the reading was over, the missionary gave out a hymn for us to sing.  I dearly loved to go to the church, it was so solemn.  I never knew rightly that I had much sin till I went there.  When I found out that I was a great sinner, I was very sorely grieved, and very much frightened.  I used to pray God to pardon my sins for Christ’s sake, and forgive me for every thing I had done amiss; and when I went home to my work, I always thought about what I had heard from the missionaries, and wished to be good that I might go to heaven.  After a while I was admitted a candidate for the holy Communion.—­I had been baptized long before this, in August 1817, by the Rev. Mr. Curtin, of the English Church, after I had been taught to repeat the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer.  I wished at that time to attend a Sunday School taught by Mr. Curtin, but he would not receive me without a written note from my master, granting his permission.  I did not ask my owner’s permission, from the belief that it would be refused; so that I got no farther instruction at that time from the English Church.[12]

[Footnote 12:  She possesses a copy of Mrs. Trimmer’s “Charity School Spelling Book,” presented to her by the Rev. Mr. Curtin, and dated August 30, 1817.  In this book her name is written “Mary, Princess of Wales”—­an appellation which, she says, was given her by her owners.  It is a common practice with the colonists to give ridiculous names of this description to their slaves; being, in fact, one of the numberless modes of expressing the habitual contempt with which they regard the negro race.—­In printing this narrative we have retained Mary’s paternal name of Prince.—­Ed.]

Some time after I began to attend the Moravian Church, I met with Daniel James, afterwards my dear husband.  He was a carpenter and cooper to his trade; an honest, hard-working, decent black man, and a widower.  He had purchased his freedom of his mistress, old Mrs. Baker, with money he had earned whilst a slave.  When he asked me to marry him, I took time to consider the matter over with myself, and would not say yes till he went to church with me and joined the Moravians.  He was very industrious after he bought his freedom; and he had hired a comfortable house, and had convenient things about him.  We were joined in marriage, about Christmas 1826, in the Moravian Chapel at Spring Gardens, by the Rev. Mr. Olufsen.  We could not be married in the English Church.  English marriage is not allowed to slaves; and no free man can marry a slave woman.