Biography of soujourner

Early Life

Acclaimed abolitionist and women’s rights supporter Sojourner Truth was born into slavery as Isabella Baumfree sometime between 1797 and 1800 in Ulster County, New York.

She was the second youngest of James and Betsey Baumfree’s ten to twelve children. Like the rest of her family, Isabella (also known as Belle) was the “property” of one Colonel Hardenbergh (Ardinburgh).

Biography of sojourner truth

As a youngster, she knew only about one-half of her siblings because her owner sold them to other slaveholders before she was old enough to remember them.

Early in Baumfree’s life, Colonel Hardenbergh died and left her family to his son Charles.

When the son died in 1806, John Neely, who lived in Ulster County near Kingston, New York, purchased the nine-year-old Baumfree at auction, along with a flock of sheep, for $100. Two years later, Martinus Schryver (Scriver), a fisherman and tavern owner who lived near Kingston, bought Baumfree from Neely for $105.

In 1810, John J. Du