Henry Goings, Rambles of a Runaway from Southern Slavery (University of Virginia Press, 2012)

Henry Goings’s story was almost lost. Born enslaved in Virginia in 1810, he was moved to North Carolina and then Alabama, visiting many other parts of the South with several owners. He escaped bondage in 1839 by posing as a free black man, Henry Goings, and settled in Canada but was nearly recaptured in 1843 on a return to rescue his wife Maria from slavery. Goings remarried and had a family, publishing his story in Ontario, Canada, in 1869. Rambles of a Runaway from Southern Slavery was lost for 137 years until the University of Virginia acquired the sole known copy. Coedited with Mike Plunkett and Edward Gaynor it was published again in 2012 after extensive research verified both Goings’s existence and the particulars of the story he told. University of Virginia Press: Rambles of A Runaway