required to return or to give an account of themselves during that time. As this week was their own, and some of them liked to earn a little spending money, they remained and worked; the masters paying them for the labor. But many felt that as one week of liberty in a year was a glorious respite from the long weeks of unrequited tasks, a lifetime of such liberty would be better, and they took advantage of that time to leave for the North. So, after the holidays, a greater number of fugitives were passed along. In after years the slaveholders discontinued this custom.

It was after one of these seasons that two fine looking colored men and a woman came from Maryland and were passed to other stations. Several years after, one of the men met Hannah Cox at an anti-slavery meeting, and reminded her of the time she "helped him to freedom."

One woman came there from Wilmington, who was the slave of a Presbyterian minister. She had been kindly treated, but heard a whisper in the family that she was to be sold next day. She was very nervous through fear that her "kind massa" would be after her. While she was secreted in the garret, a carriage drove by which they knew was from Wilmington.

As soon as it was dark she was taken to another station and rapidly sent on to Canada. Next day they heard that some persons were in Kennett Square hunting a fugitive slave, but could not find her.

Eight men came at one time, just after the passage of the "Fugitive Slave Law." They were in haste to reach Philadelphia to meet another party. There being no railroad in the lower part of the county then, J. William

Cox, who was but a lad, took them to West Chester in the night, in time to take the first train in the morning. As the horses were busy he took but one, which he rode ; the men followed. Before reaching West Chester he halted and gave them directions to walk by twos at some distance apart, so as not to excite suspicion along the streets and when he arrived opposite the depot he would raise his hat; the first two were then to cross the street and enter the door, the others were to follow. reaching the place he gave the signal and rode on to Simon Barnard's to ask if he would go to the depot and see that the men were started rightly. He met Simon at the gate, and while talking he was astonished to see six of the men coming up behind him. They had not observed the first two enter the depot, and had followed him. He gave them at once into Simon's charge and left.

On

In the summer of 1843, eight men came in the night. It was hay-harvest, and John Cox was needing help. He kept them in the barn to assist. As soon as one cart was loaded it was driven in, and the man returned with the empty one to the field-John and the boy remaining in the barn. The men wondered how they unloaded so quickly. But they were men not to be trusted with the secret, and it was carefully kept from them.

One midnight, in 1857, they were startled by the signal that "Conductor Jackson's" train was at Longwood, with a party that needed immediate assistance. They comprised eighteen in all, seven men, the rest women and children. They had been attacked near Centreville, Del., by a party of Irishmen, whom they took to

be kidnappers. They fought desperately; one of the negroes showed a knife with which he had stabbed an Irishman. The whole party were intensely excited and the family very much alarmed, not knowing but that the pursuers were close upon them. A hot supper was at once prepared for them, and as quickly as possible they were taken further North. They had not been gone more than fifteen minutes, when loud talking was heard from two carriages coming from toward Wilmington, and one person was heard saying, "We'll overtake them yet." The anxious family awaited tremblingly the return of those who took the slaves, knowing well the consequences should they be overtaken and captured.

They learned afterwards that the persons who drove by were returning from a party; and that the Irishmen were not kidnappers, but lived in the neighborhood, and had gone out to have a little sport on Hallow Eve. The unfortunate one who received the injury, died shortly after in Centreville.

A slave and a free colored man in their employ were foddering the stock one morning at daybreak, when two men in a carriage stopped near the fodder-stock. One exclaimed, "that is he." At this moment one of the men ran to the stack and caught the negro who was descending the ladder, but who happened to be the free man. A sharp fight ensued, in which the white man received some severe injuries. The colored man declared in emphatic language, not wholly in conformity with one of the Commandments, that he would shoot him. The one in the carriage called out "That is not Sam." Sam knew his master's voice and hid. The free

man ran to the house, got the gun, and started in hot pursuit of the men; but they drove so fast as to keep beyond the reach of his ammunition. That night the slave left for a safer home farther North.

John and Hannah Cox were members of the Society of Friends, and were endued with a great love of justice and right, and a desire to fulfill in their lives the Divine law. It was this inherent principle in the days of slavery that made abolitionists of men and women who " considered those in chains as bound with them."

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They became interested in anti-slavery meetings, and from reading the Liberator and hearing Charles C. Burleigh in one of his lectures repeat Whittier's poem, "Our Fellow Countrymen in Chains," they advocated immediate emancipation. They thought with William Lloyd Garrison that while the slave was made to work under the lash, that while a husband was sold by a Virginia gentleman to be taken to Louisiana, children sold to slave-traders to go under different masters, and the wife and mother kept at home to pine in a hovel made desolate, to talk of the gradual extermination of these evils was as unwise in principle as to tell a man to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher, or tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire." The burning of Pennsylvania Hall, in Philadelphia, on May 17th, 1838, and what they saw and heard there, aroused them to increased interest and activity in the cause. It was there they became personally acquainted with Garrison and the warm friendship which began then continued during life. He was a frequent visitor at their place, especially

during the meetings of Progressive Friends at Longwood, as were also Isaac T. Hopper, John G. Whittier, Lucretia Mott, Sarah Pugh, Abby Kelley, Lucy Stone, Mary Grew, James Russell Lowell, Samuel J. May, Theodore Parker, Robert Collyer, James Freeman Clarke, and a host of others who were interested in the progress and elevation of the human family.

John Cox was President of the Kennett Anti-slavery Society, and both he and his wife were frequently sent as delegates to Anti-slavery State and National Conventions.

On the eleventh of Ninth mo. (September), 1873, the fiftieth anniversary of their wedding was celebrated at their home at Longwood, and eighty-two guests signed the certificate. Many of them were old anti-slavery friends and co-laborers in the various reforms in which husband and wife were so warmly interested.

Their friend and neighbor, Chandler Darlington, in recounting the works of their life in a poem prepared for the occasion, said:

We saw you early on the watch-tower stand,
When Slavery's curse polluted all the land :
You've lived to see that blighting curse removed,
And Freedom triumph in the land you loved:
For Woman's right to equal be with Man
You've borne the taunt and labored in the van:
Nor were you circumscribed to those alone;
The Temperance cause you fully made your own.
In works of Charity, at open door

Your liberal hands have freely served the poor:
Where'er was sorrow, suffering or despair,

Your kindly sympathy was ever there.

Bayard Taylor, whose boyhood's home was near them, sent a greeting from Germany, where he was then residing, in which he said: