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Harriet Jacobs (1813 or 1815 – March 7, 1897) was an African-American abolitionist and writer whose autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is now considered an "American classic".Yellin, Life 126
Born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina, she was sexually harassed by her enslaver. When he threatened to sell her children if she did not submit to his desire, she hid in a tiny crawl space under the roof of her grandmother's house, so low she could not stand up in it. After staying there for seven years, she finally managed to escape to the free North, where she was reunited with her children Joseph and Louisa Matilda and her brother John S. Jacobs. She found work as a nanny and got into contact with abolitionist and feminist reformers. Even in New York City, her freedom was in danger until her employer was able to pay off her legal owner.
During and immediately after the American Civil War, she travelled to Union-occupied parts of the Confederate South together with her daughter, organizing help and founding two schools for fugitive and freed slaves.
While Harriet's mother and grandmother were known by their owner's family name of Horniblow, Harriet used the opportunity of the baptism of her children to register Jacobs as their family name. She and her brother John also used that name after having escaped from slavery. The baptism was conducted without the knowledge of Harriet's master, Norcom. Harriet was convinced that her father should have been called Jacobs because his father was Henry Jacobs, a free white man.Jacobs, Incidents 121; Yellin, Life 40 After Harriet's mother died, her father married a free African American. The only child from that marriage, Harriet's half brother, was called Elijah after his father and always used Knox as his family name, which was the name of his father's enslaver.Yellin, Life 14, 223, 224
In 1825, the owner of Harriet and John Jacobs died. She willed Harriet to her three-year-old niece Mary Matilda Norcom. Mary Matilda's father, the physician Dr. James Norcom (son-in-law of the deceased tavern keeper), became her de facto master. Most of the property, including her brother John, was inherited by the tavern keeper's widow. Dr. Norcom hired John, and the Jacobs siblings lived together in his household. Following the death of the widow, her slaves were sold at the New Year's Day auction, 1828. Among them were Harriet's brother John, her grandmother Molly Horniblow and Molly's son Mark. Being sold at public auction was a traumatic experience for twelve-year old John.J.Jacobs, Tale 86 Friends of hers bought Molly Horniblow and Mark with money Molly had been working hard to save over the many years of her servitude at the tavern. Afterwards Molly Horniblow was set free, and her own son Mark became her slave. Because of legal restrictions on manumission, Mark had to remain his mother's slave until in 1847 or 1848 she finally succeeded in freeing him.Yellin, Life 363 (note to p. 254) John Jacobs was bought by Dr. Norcom, thus he and his sister stayed together.
The same year, 1828, Molly Horniblow's youngest son, Joseph, tried to escape. He was caught, paraded in chains through Edenton, put into jail, and finally sold to New Orleans. The family later learned that he escaped again and reached New York. After that he was lost to the family. The Jacobs siblings, who, even as children, were talking about escaping to freedom, saw him as a hero. Both of them would later name their sons for him.Yellin, Life 20–21
Norcom reacted by selling Jacobs's children and her brother John to a slave trader demanding that they should be sold in a different state, thus expecting to separate them forever from their mother and sister. However, the trader was secretly in league with Sawyer, to whom he sold all three of them, thus frustrating Norcom's plan for revenge. In her autobiography, Jacobs accuses Sawyer of not having kept his promise to legally manumit their children.Jacobs, Incidents 253 Still, Sawyer allowed his enslaved children to live with their great-grandmother Molly Horniblow. After Sawyer married in 1838, Jacobs asked her grandmother to remind him of his promise. He asked and obtained Jacobs's approval to send their daughter to live with his cousin in Brooklyn, New York, where slavery had already been abolished. He also suggested sending their son to the Free States. While locked in her cell, Jacobs could often observe her unsuspecting children.
In 1843 Jacobs heard that Norcom was on his way to New York to force her back into slavery, which was legal for him to do everywhere inside the United States. She asked Mary Willis for a leave of two weeks and went to her brother John in Boston. John Jacobs, in his capacity as personal servant, had accompanied his owner Sawyer on his marriage trip through the North in 1838. He had gained his freedom by leaving his master in New York. After that he had gone whaling and had been absent for more than three years. From Boston, Harriet Jacobs wrote to her grandmother asking her to send Joseph there, so that he could live there with his uncle John. After Joseph's arrival, she returned to her work as Imogen Willis's nanny.Yellin, Life 72 Her work with the Willis family came to an abrupt end in October 1843, when Jacobs learned that her whereabouts had been betrayed to Norcom. Again, she had to flee to Boston, where the strength of the Abolitionism guaranteed a certain level of security.Yellin, Life 74 Moving to Boston also gave her the opportunity to take her daughter Louisa Matilda from the house of Sawyer's cousin in Brooklyn, where she had been treated not much better than a slave.Yellin, Life 68–69, 74
In Boston Jacobs took on odd jobs.Yellin, Life 77–78, 87 Her stay there was interrupted by the death of Mary Stace Willis in March 1845. Nathaniel Willis took his daughter Imogen on a ten-month visit to the family of his deceased wife in England. For the journey, Jacobs resumed her job as nanny. For several months, she stayed together with Imogen in the vicarage at Steventon, the home of Mary Stace Willis's sister and her husband Reverend William Vincent, while Willis went to London and to the Continent. In her autobiography, she reflects on the experiences made during the journey: She did not notice any sign of racism, which often embittered her life in the US. In consequence of this, she gained a new access to her Christian faith. At home, Christian ministers treating blacks with contempt or even buying and selling slaves had been an obstacle to her spiritual life.Yellin, Life 83–87
The former "slave girl" who had never been to school, and whose life had mostly been confined by the struggle for her own survival in dignity and that of her children, now found herself in circles that were about to change America through their - by the standards of the time - radical set of ideas. The Reading Room was in the same building as the newspaper The North Star, run by Frederick Douglass, who today is considered the most influential African American of his century. Jacobs lived at the house of the white couple Amy and Isaac Post. Douglass and the Posts were staunch enemies of slavery and racism, and supporters of women's suffrage. The year before, Douglass and Amy Post had attended the Seneca Falls Convention, the world's first convention on women's rights, and had signed the Declaration of Sentiments, which demanded equal rights for women.
In the spring of 1851, Jacobs was again informed that she was in danger of being recaptured. Cornelia Willis sent Jacobs together with her (Willis's) one-year-old daughter Lilian to Massachusetts which was comparatively safe. Jacobs, in whose autobiography the constant danger for herself and other enslaved mothers of being separated from their children is an important theme, spoke to her employer of the sacrifice that letting go of her baby daughter meant to her. Cornelia Willis answered by explaining that the slave catchers would have to return the baby to the mother, if Jacobs should be caught. She would then try to rescue Jacobs.Jacobs, Incidents 291
In February 1852, Jacobs read in the newspaper that her legal owner, the daughter of the recently deceased Norcom, had arrived at a New York Hotel together with her husband, obviously intending to re-claim their fugitive slave. Again, Cornelia Willis sent Jacobs to Massachusetts together with Lilian. Some days later, she wrote a letter to Jacobs informing her of her intention to buy Jacobs's freedom. Jacobs replied that she preferred to join her brother who had gone to California. Regardless, Cornelia Willis bought her freedom for $300. In her autobiography, Jacobs describes her mixed feelings: Bitterness at the thought that "a human being was sold in the free city of New York", happiness at the thought that her freedom was secured, and "love" and "gratitude" for Cornelia Willis.Jacobs, Incidents 300. Corresponding to Yellin (ed.), Incidents 200–201. Italics of the word sold in the autobiography.
In late 1852 or early 1853, Amy Post suggested that Jacobs should write her life story. Jacobs's brother had for some time been urging her to do so, and she felt a moral obligation to tell her story to help build public support for the antislavery cause and thus save others from suffering a similar fate.Yellin, Life 118–119
Still, Jacobs had acted against moral ideas commonly shared in her time, including by herself, by consenting to a sexual relationship with Sawyer. The shame caused by this memory and the resulting fear of having to tell her story had been the reason for her initially avoiding contact with the abolitionist movement her brother John had joined in the 1840s.Yellin, Life 78 Finally, Jacobs overcame her trauma and feeling of shame, and she consented to publish her story. Her reply to Post describing her internal struggle has survived.Transcribed in the appendix to Yellin (ed.), Incidents 253–255. Summarized in Yellin, Life 118–119.
In June 1853, Jacobs chanced to read a defense of slavery entitled "The Women of England vs. the Women of America" in an old newspaper. Written by Julia Tyler, wife of former president John Tyler, the text claimed that the household slaves were "well clothed and happy". Jacobs spent the whole night writing a reply, which she sent to the New York Tribune. Her letter, signed "A Fugitive Slave", published on June 21, was her first text to be printed. Her biographer, Jean Fagan Yellin, comments, "When the letter was printed ..., an author was born."Yellin, Life 122–123
In October 1853, she wrote to Amy Post that she had decided to become the author of her own story. In the same letter, only a few lines earlier, she had informed Post of her grandmother's death. Yellin concludes that the "death of her revered grandmother" made it possible for Jacobs to "reveal her troubled sexual history" which she could never have done "while her proud, judgmental grandmother lived."Yellin, Life 124–126
While using the little spare time a children's nurse had to write her story, Jacobs lived with the Willis family at Idlewild, their new country residence. With N.P.Willis being largely forgotten today,"... when N.P.Willis is mentioned today it is generally as a footnote to some else's story."; Baker, Thomas N. Sentiment and Celebrity: Nathaniel Parker Willis and the Trials of Literary Fame. New York, Oxford University Press, 2001. , p. 4. Yellin comments on the irony of the situation: "Idlewild had been conceived as a famous writer's retreat, but its owner never imagined that it was his children's nurse who would create an American classic there".Yellin, Life 126
Louisa copied the manuscript,Yellin (ed.), Incidents xxiii; Yellin, Life 131 standardizing orthography and punctuation. Yellin observes that both style and content are "completely consistent" with the rest of Jacobs's writing and states, "there is no evidence to suggest that Louisa Matilda had any significant impact on either the subject matter or the style of the book."Yellin (ed.), Incidents xxiii
When, by mid-1857, her work was finally nearing completion, she asked Amy Post for a preface. Even in this letter she mentions the shame that made writing her story difficult for herself: "as much pleasure as it would afford me and as great an honor as I would deem it to have your name associated with my Book –Yet believe me dear friend, there are many painful things in it – that make me shrink from asking the sacrifice from one so good and pure as your self–."Yellin, Life 135
On October 16, 1859, the anti-slavery activist John Brown tried to incite a slave rebellion at Harper's Ferry. Brown, who was executed in December, was considered a martyr and hero by many abolitionists, among them Harriet Jacobs, who added a tribute to Brown as the final chapter to her manuscript. She then sent the manuscript to publishers Phillips and Samson in Boston. They were ready to publish it under the condition that either Nathaniel Parker Willis or Harriet Beecher Stowe would supply a preface. Jacobs was unwilling to ask Willis, who held pro-slavery views, but she asked Stowe, who declined. Soon after, the publishers failed, thus frustrating Jacobs's second attempt to get her story printed.Yellin, Life 140
Jacobs met Child in Boston, and Child not only agreed to write a preface, but also to become the editor of the book. Child then re-arranged the material according to a more chronological order. She also suggested dropping the final chapter on Brown and adding more information on the anti-black violence which occurred in Edenton after Nat Turner's 1831 rebellion. She kept contact with Jacobs via mail, but the two women failed to meet a second time during the editing process, because with Cornelia Willis passing through a dangerous pregnancy and premature birth Jacobs was not able to leave Idlewild.Yellin, Life 140–142
After the book had been stereotyped, Thayer and Eldridge, too, failed. Jacobs succeeded in buying the stereotype plates and to get the book printed and bound.Yellin, Life 142–143
In January 1861, nearly four years after she had finished the manuscript, Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl finally appeared before the public. The next month, an abridged and censored version of her brother John S. Jacob's own memoir, entitled A True Tale of Slavery, was published in London (in 1855 the original version had been published in full by a progressive newspaper in Sydney, Australia, as The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots: A True Story of Slavery).Baker, Nick and Coombe, Ian How a lost story of American slavery was found in Australia ABC News, 12 July 2024. Retrieved 12 July 2024. Both siblings relate in their respective narratives their own experiences, experiences made together, and episodes in the life of the other sibling.
In her book, Harriet Jacobs does not mention the town or even the state, where she was held as a slave, and changes all personal names, given names as well as family names, with the only exception of the Post couple, whose names are given correctly. However, John Jacobs (called "William" in his sister's book) mentions Edenton as his birthplace and uses the correct given names, but abbreviates most family names. So Dr. Norcom is "Dr. Flint" in Harriet's book, but "Dr. N-" in John's. An author's name is not given on the title page, but the "Preface by the author" is signed "Linda Brent" and the narrator is called by that name throughout the story.
The publication did not cause contempt as Jacobs had feared. On the contrary, Jacobs gained respect. Although she had used a pseudonym, in abolitionist circles she was regularly introduced with words like "Mrs. Jacobs, the author of Linda", thereby conceding her the honorific "Mrs." which normally was reserved for married women.Yellin, Life 161 The London Daily News wrote in 1862, that Linda Brent was a true "heroine", giving an example "of endurance and persistency in the struggle for liberty" and "moral rectitude".Yellin, Life 152
In the spring of 1862, Harriet Jacobs went to Washington, D.C. and neighboring Alexandria, Virginia. She summarized her experiences during the first months in a report entitled Life among the Contrabands, published in September in Garrison's The Liberator. The author was featured as "Mrs. Jacobs, the author of 'Linda'". This report is a description of the fugitives' misery designed to appeal to donors, but it is also a political denunciation of slavery. Jacobs emphasizes her conviction that the freedman will be able to build self-determined lives, if they get the necessary support.. Summary of the report in: Yellin, Life 159–161
During the fall of 1862, she traveled through the North using her popularity as author of Incidents to build up a network to support her relief work.Yellin, Life 161–162 The New York Friends (i.e. the Quakers) gave her credentials as a relief agent.Yellin, Life 164
From January 1863, she made Alexandria the center of her activity. Together with Quaker Julia Wilbur, the teacher, feminist and abolitionist, whom she had already known in Rochester, she was distributing clothes and blankets and at the same time struggling with incompetent, corrupt, or openly racist authorities.Yellin, Life 164–174
While doing relief work in Alexandria, Jacobs was also involved in the political world. In May 1863 she attended the yearly conference of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in Boston. Together with the other participants she watched the parade of the newly created 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment,For the symbolic and political value of this regiment cf. David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass. Prophet of Freedom. New York 2018, pp. 388–402, especially p. 398. consisting of black soldiers led by white officers. Since the Lincoln administration had declined to use African American soldiers only a few months past, this was a highly symbolic event. Jacobs expressed her joy and pride in a letter to Lydia Maria Child: "How my heart swelled with the thought that my poor oppressed race were to strike a blow for freedom !" Yellin, Life 168–169
Jacobs's work in Alexandria was recognized on the local as well as on the national level, especially in abolitionist circles. In the spring of 1864 she was elected to the executive committee of the Women's Loyal National League, a women's organization founded in 1863 in response to an appeal by Susan B. Anthony which aimed at collecting signatures for a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.Yellin, Life 175–176 On August 1, 1864, she delivered the speech on occasion of the celebration of the British West Indian Emancipation in front of the African American soldiers of a military hospital in Alexandria. Many abolitionists, among them Frederick Douglass,David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass. Prophet of Freedom. New York 2018, p. 418. This is the only time Jacobs is mentioned in this book, while Douglass is mentioned on 30 different pages in Yellin, Harriet Jacobs (according to the index). stopped over in Alexandria while touring the South in order to see Jacobs and her work.Yellin, Life 181–183 On a personal level, she found her labors highly rewarding. Already in December 1862 she had written to Amy Post that the preceding six months had been the happiest in her whole life.Yellin, Life 162, cf. 167
But the political situation had changed: Lincoln had been assassinated and his successor Andrew Johnson was a Southerner and former slaveholder. He ordered the removal of many freedmen from the land which had been allotted to them by the army just one year before. The land question together with the unjust labor contracts forced on the former slaves by their former enslavers with the help of the army, are an important subject in Jacobs's reports from Georgia.Yellin, Life 191–195
Already in July 1866, mother and daughter Jacobs left Savannah which was more and more suffering from anti-black violence. Once again, Harriet Jacobs went to Idlewild, to assist Cornelia Willis in caring for her dying husband until his death in January 1867.Yellin, Life 200–202
In the spring of 1867, she visited the widow of her uncle Mark who was the only survivor of the family still living in Edenton. At the end of the year she undertook her last journey to Great Britain in order to collect money for the projected orphanage and asylum in Savannah. But after her return she had to realize that the anti-black terror in Georgia by the Ku-Klux-Klan and other groups rendered these projects impossible. The money collected was given to the asylum fund of the New York Friends.Yellin, Life 210–211, 217 and note on p. 345
In the 1860s a personal tragedy occurred: In the early 1850s, her son Joseph had gone to California to search for gold together with his uncle John. Later the two had continued on to Australia. John S. Jacobs later went to England, while Joseph stayed in Australia. Some time later, no more letters reached Jacobs from Australia. Using her connections to Australian clergymen, Child had an appeal on behalf of her friend read in Australian churches, but to no avail. Jacobs never again heard of her son.Yellin, Life 224–225
In 2004, Yellin published an exhaustive biography (394 pages) entitled Harriet Jacobs: A Life. Yellin also conceived of the idea of the Harriet Jacobs Papers Project. In 2000, an advisory board for the project was established, and after funding was awarded, the project began on a full-time basis in September 2002. Of the approximately 900 documents by, to, and about Harriet Jacobs, her brother John S. Jacobs, and her daughter Louisa Matilda Jacobs amassed by the Project, over 300 were published in 2008 in a two volume edition entitled The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers.Yellin, Life xx, 268; Yellin, Family Papers xxiv-xxvi, xxix
Today, Jacobs is seen as an "icon of female resistance". David S. Reynolds' review of Yellin's 2004 biography in The New York Times, states that Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl "and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave are commonly viewed as the two most important slave narratives."
In an interview, Colson Whitehead, author of the best selling novel, The Underground Railroad, published in 2016, said: "Harriet Jacobs is a big referent for the character of Cora", the heroine of the novel. Cora has to hide in a place in the attic of a house in Jacobs's native North Carolina, where like Jacobs she is not able to stand, but like her can observe the outside life through a hole that "had been carved from the inside, the work of a previous occupant" (p. 185).The parallel between the respective hiding places of Jacobs and Cora has been observed by Martin Ebel:
In 2017 Jacobs was the subject of an episode of the Futility Closet Podcast, where her experience living in a crawl space was compared with the wartime experience of Patrick Fowler.
According to a 2017 article in Forbes magazine, a 2013 translation of Incidents by Yuki Horikoshi became a bestseller in Japan.
In 2022, French artist Elizabeth Colomba painted a portrait of Jacobs. The title of the portrait, Tricked Out in a Gay and Fashionable Finery, was taken from the Norcom's notice advertising Jacobs as a runaway.
At the end of her preface to the 2000 edition of Incidents, Yellin writes,
| 1809 | Birth of Edgar Allan Poe and Abraham Lincoln. | |
| 1811 | Birth of Harriet Beecher Stowe. | |
| 1812 | U.S. declares war on Britain (War of 1812). | |
| 1813 | Harriet Jacobs is born. | |
| 1815 | Harriet's brother John S. Jacobs is born. | |
| 1816 | American Colonization Society is founded to resettle freed blacks in Africa. | |
| 1817 | Birth of Henry David Thoreau. | |
| 1818 | Birth of Frederick Douglass. | |
| 1819 | Harriet Jacobs's mother dies. | Birth of Walt Whitman and Herman Melville. |
| 1825 | Harriet Jacobs's mistress dies, and Harriet becomes the property of Dr. Norcom's little daughter. | |
| 1826 Harriet's father dies. | Death of Thomas Jefferson. His slaves are sold to cover his debt. James Fenimore Cooper writes The Last of the Mohicans. | |
| 1828 | Jacobs's grandmother is bought by a friend and subsequently set free.
Jacobs's uncle Joseph escapes, is returned in chains, and escapes again. | |
| 1829 Birth of Jacobs's son Joseph. | Andrew Jackson is inaugurated as 7th President. | |
| 1831 | Virginia slave revolt led by Nat Turner. William Lloyd Garrison begins publication of The Liberator. | |
| 1833 | Birth of daughter Louisa Matilda Jacobs. | |
| 1834 | Slavery is abolished in the British Empire. | |
| 1835 | Harriet Jacobs goes into hiding in the garret of her grandmother's house. | Mark Twain is born. |
| 1836 | Jacobs's 2nd year in the garret begins. Sawyer elected to Congress. | |
| 1837 | Jacobs's 3rd year in the garret begins. | The Gag Rule, aimed at suppressing debate on slavery, is accepted by U.S. Congress. E. P. Lovejoy, editor of an abolitionist paper, is murdered by mob in Alton, Illinois. |
| 1838 | Jacobs's 4th year in the garret begins. Sawyer goes to Chicago to marry. John S. Jacobs gains his freedom. | Frederick Douglass escapes to freedom, only weeks before John S. does. |
| 1839 | Jacobs's 5th year in the garret begins. John S. Jacobs goes on his whaling journey. | Slaves take control of the slave-ship, La Amistad. Theodore Dwight Weld's anti-slavery book, American Slavery As It Is, is published. |
| 1840 | Jacobs's 6th year in the garret begins. John S. still on the whaler. | First World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. |
| 1841 | Jacobs's 7th and final year in the garret begins. John S. still on the whaler. | Herman Melville goes on the whaling journey that would later inspire Moby-Dick. |
| 1842 | Harriet Jacobs escapes to the North. In New York she finds work as a nurse to the baby daughter of N.P.Willis.
John S. still on the whaler. | |
| 1843 | John S. Jacobs returns and settles in Boston.
Harriet Jacobs has to flee from New York and is reunited with her brother and both her children in Boston. | |
| 1845 | Harriet Jacobs travels to England in her capacity as Imogen Willis's nanny. | Baptists split into the Northern and Southern conventions over the slavery issue.
Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven is published. |
| 1846 | Congress declares war on Mexico. | |
| 1848 | The Mexican–American War ends.
Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights. | |
| 1849 Harriet Jacobs moves to Rochester, her friendship with Amy Post begins. | Thoreau writes Civil Disobedience. | |
| 1850 | Harriet Jacobs re-hired by Willis's second wife Cornelia. Her brother John S. goes to California, then to Australia, and finally to England. | Fugitive Slave Law. |
| 1851 | Herman Melville writes Moby-Dick.
Women's rights activist Amelia Bloomer starts to advocate for the "Bloomer dress". | |
| 1852 | Cornelia Willis buys Harriet Jacobs's freedom. | Harriet Beecher Stowe writes Uncle Tom's Cabin. |
| 1853 | Jacobs's grandmother dies. Her first published writing is an anonymous letter to a New York newspaper. She begins writing Incidents. | |
| 1854 | Kansas-Nebraska Act. | |
| 1855 | John S. Jacobs has his narrative, The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots: A True Story of Slavery, published in Australia. | |
| 1856 | The slavery issue leads to open violence in Kansas ("Bleeding Kansas"). | |
| 1857 | Supreme Court ruling on Dred Scott: Blacks had "no rights which the white man was bound to respect". | |
| 1858 | Harriet Jacobs completes the manuscript of Incidents, then travels to England, unsuccessfully trying to get it published. | |
| 1859 | John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry.
The Supreme Court declares the Fugitive Slave Law constitutional. | |
| 1860 | Lydia Maria Child becomes the editor of Incidents. | Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th President (November 7). South Carolina secedes (December 20). |
| 1861 | Publication of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (January). | Davis inaugurated as president of the Confederacy (February 18).
Abraham Lincoln inaugurated as 16th President (March 4). Confederate soldiers fire on Fort Sumter (April 12). The Civil War begins. |
| 1862 | Harriet Jacobs goes to Washington, D.C. and Alexandria, Virginia to help escaped slaves. | |
| 1863 | Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. | |
| 1864 | Jacobs School opens in Alexandria. | |
| 1865 | Harriet and Louisa Matilda Jacobs go to Savannah, Georgia to help freedmen. | Confederate surrender at Appomatox Court House.
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. 13th Amendment abolishes slavery. |
| 1866 | Harriet and Louisa Matilda Jacobs leave Savannah. Harriet helps Cornelia Willis nursing her dying husband. | |
| 1867 | Jacobs goes to England to collect money. | |
| 1868 | Jacobs returns from England and retires to private life. | |
| 1873 | John S. Jacobs returns to the U. S. and settles close to his sister's house. His death. | |
| 1897 | Death of Harriet Jacobs on March 7, 1897, in Washington, D.C. |
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