1263 Josiah Henson, Canada, Minister

September 20. Josiah Henson. Born into , Josiah refused to remain enslaved. When he was 18, he became a Christian and soon began to preach after slaving all day. He also married and had twelve children.

In 1830, Josiah escaped to Canada and founded a settlement and a laborer's school for other fugitive slaves. In 1842, he founded the British American Institute, an Afro-Canadian community and industrial school—a refuge for escaped slaves.

Real strength comes from facing real weakness. Before he escaped to Canada and gained freedom for himself and his family, Josiah had spent about four decades as a slave.

While in Canada, Josiah’s oldest son, Tom, had the opportunity to go to school. He learned to read, and Josiah would often ask his son to read the Bible to him to help him memorize the stories and verses to preach on. But one early Sunday morning before church, Tom had been reading from the Psalms and asked, “Father, who is David?”

Tom was eager to learn more about the Old Testament king who’d written the psalm he had just read. But even though Josiah was a preacher, he had no idea who David was. It wasn’t because he didn’t want to know.

Josiah had never learned to read. And because he’d never learned to read, he’d never read the story of David.

Josiah was afraid to admit to his son that he didn’t know because he didn’t want Tom to think less of him. He tried to give the boy a simple answer, one that hopefully had no follow-up questions. “He was a man of God, my son.”

But the answer wasn’t what Tom was looking for. He already knew David was a man of God. But Tom wanted to know where David lived and what he did. How had David become a man of God? The questions came at Josiah like a whirlwind, so any chance to avoid the real answer became impossible. Finally, after minutes of listening to Tom’s pleading, he admitted that he didn’t know anything about David.

But Tom saw deeper into Josiah’s admission. “Why, Father … can’t you read?”

Josiah felt his spirit sink. To Tom, Josiah was the very definition of what it meant to be a man. He was the leader, the protector, the provider of his family. To admit to his son that there was something he couldn’t do … it was embarrassing.

But Josiah couldn’t lie. He admitted the truth—he couldn’t read.

“Why not?” Tom asked curiously.

“Because I never had an opportunity to learn, nor anybody to teach me.” Back in America slaves were not allowed to have an education. They weren’t permitted to learn anything about letters and words.

“Well,” Tom said. “You can learn now, Father.”

Josiah wanted to laugh. He was nearly fifty years old. “I am too old, and have not time enough,” he said. “Still there is nobody to teach me.”

But Tom wouldn’t accept any excuses. “Why, Father, I’ll teach you! I can do it, I know. And then you’ll know so much more that you will be able to talk better and preach better!”

Josiah was shocked at his son’s persistence. He always knew he wanted his children to be more successful in life, and it was no surprise that someone like Tom would grow up to know more than him because of better opportunities. But to learn from his own son … learn a skill that most people mastered in childhood … he never expected such a turn of events. Fathers were supposed to instruct their children, not the other way around.

But Josiah knew that Tom was right. Tom could help him. Their lessons began, and at first it wasn’t easy for Josiah to learn or for Tom to teach. But as the weeks and months passed, Josiah eventually learned to read, and the knowledge he acquired burned in him an even deeper passion to help others—especially those who had been denied an education because of slavery.

“Get wisdom, get understanding; do not forget my words or turn away from them” (Proverbs 4:5 NIV).

When you find you need help, are you willing to ask for it? Real strength comes from facing real weakness.

Chapple, William. The Story of . Dresden, , 1900. Internet Archive. Accessed March 4, 2019. Neivman, Debra, ed. The African-American mosaic; a Library of Congress resource guide for the study of Black history and culture I. “Uncle Tom’s Story of His Life: An Autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson (Mrs. ’s “Uncle Tom”)” London: Christian Age Office, 1876. Internet Archive. Accessed Web. March 4, 2019. Henson, Josiah. The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself. Boston: Arthur D. Phelps, 1849.

The following passage is written by Josiah Henson, remembering the day his family was sold off one by one.

The [man who owned the estate, Josiah’s mother and siblings] was riding from one of his scenes of riotous excess, when, falling from his horse, in crossing a little run, not a foot deep, he was unable to save himself from drowning.

In consequence of his decease, it became necessary to sell the estate and the slaves, in order to divide the property among the heirs; and we were all put up at auction and sold to the highest bidder, and scattered over various parts of the country. My brothers and sisters were bid off one by one, while my mother, holding my hand, looked on in an agony of grief, the cause of which

Page 4 I but ill understood at first, but which dawned on my mind, with dreadful clearness, as the sale proceeded. My mother was then separated from me, and put up in her turn. She was bought by a man named Isaac R., residing in Montgomery county, and then I was offered to the assembled purchasers. My mother, half distracted with the parting forever from all her children, pushed through the crowd, while the bidding for me was going on, to the spot where R. was standing. She fell at his feet, and clung to his knees, entreating him in tones that a mother only could command, to buy her baby as well as herself, and spare to her one of her little ones at least. Will it, can it be believed that this man, thus appealed to, was capable not merely of turning a deaf ear to her supplication, but of disengaging himself from her with such violent blows and kicks, as to reduce her to the necessity of creeping out of his reach, and mingling the groan of bodily suffering with the sob of a breaking heart? Yet this was one of my earliest observations of men; an experience which has been common to me with thousands of my race, the bitterness of which its frequency cannot diminish to any individual who suffers it, while it is dark enough to overshadow the whole after-life with something blacker than a funeral pall.—I was bought by a stranger.—Almost immediately, however, whether my childish strength, at five or six years of age, was overmastered by such scenes and experiences, or from some accidental cause, I fell sick, and seemed to my new master so little likely to recover, that he proposed to R., the purchaser of my mother, to take me too at such a trifling rate that it could not be refused. I was thus providentially restored to my mother; and under her care, destitute as she was of the proper means of nursing me, I recovered my health, and grew up to be an uncommonly vigorous and healthy boy and man.