Women were unlikely runaways for another reason: they rarely had the opportunity to disappear or absent themselves from work for any period of time without being missed immediately. On farms, the distinction of the work duties between those who worked in the house and those who worked in the fields was not as sharp as it was on large plantations. Enslaved women on farms did farmwork and housework. In addition to tending to crops and animals, these women cooked, cleaned, sewed, and nursed—or babysat—children for their owners. They worked virtually around the clock, meeting all sorts of demands and needs of members of the slave-owning family and their guests. And these women could hope for little reprieve from the on-call, around-the-clock work regimen, because their work and home spaces often were practically the same sites. Many owners of small farms could not afford to have separate structures for their enslaved workers, so they often lived in the main family structures, in the kitchens or other auxiliary rooms.5 Hence, living in such close quarters to whites, these women would be quickly missed if they escaped.
Most slaves who seriously contemplated running away understood that traveling with children posed huge challenges that exponentially decreased the odds of their success. The ages and number of children could make an already difficult journey even more conspicuous and trying. Infants, especially, had to be wrapped well to protect them from the extreme elements. The risks included frostbite, heat stroke, dehydration, exhaustion, and illness. Adults had to carry infants and small children whose legs could not handle the walking. Moreover, at any given point, infants and toddlers could, without warning, cry into the darkness, alerting sleeping owners or the slave patrol that someone was escaping. Understandably, few escaping with young babies or small children in tow were successful.6 Moreover, traveling with one child was difficult enough; more than two children made such journeys exercises in futility. Yet the Garners had four very young children, including an infant and a toddler. Given these odds, how did the Garners have the audacity to escape?
. . .
Enslaved people in Kentucky did not have as robust a history of plotting or executing slave rebellions as other slave states, although at least one completed revolt and a handful of significant plots occurred there.7 One possible explanation is that in Kentucky enslaved people were outnumbered by whites nearly four to one, scattered across the countryside, and often enslaved on farms with only one, two, or three others.8 On smaller farms and homesteads, enslaved people spent more time with whites, leaving little opportunity to gather as a community to air common grievances or to plot insurrection. In antebellum Kentucky, it was far more common for enslaved people to resist slavery through insolence, defiance, or covert forms of resistance like work slowdowns or feigning illness—in other words, individual acts not designed to overthrow the institution or permanently shed their slave status. Not content with those options, the Garners wanted a certain and final break from slavery altogether.
What were the probabilities of slaves securing freedom in Boone County, Kentucky—legitimately, or otherwise? Geography created the best biggest threat to the security of slavery in northern Kentucky. Boone County was close enough to Ohio, a free state, that slave owners faced the likely possibility of their slaves escaping at any point. Besides that, there were cross-state relationships that further increased the likelihood of escape. Many enslaved people in Boone County had free relatives living in Cincinnati who could facilitate their escape or hide them. Slaveholders with only a handful of slaves could not afford to lose any to escape, making them more controlling and watchful over the movements of their bondspeople. Consequently, enslaved people in that area found that freedom was hard to come by—either through escape or manumission. In 1850, twelve Boone County slaves managed to escape slavery and another eight were manumitted—six of whom were freed by the same person.9 Taken together, only twenty African Americans—1 percent—obtained their freedom in that county that year. That is just a small snapshot of the dim dream of freedom in Boone County despite its proximity to a free state.
The Garners were undeterred by the odds. They had a clear vision of freedom and a mental roadmap of how to get there. Freedom was not an abstraction for them: a few of the Garner adults had been to Cincinnati and witnessed how free and freed African Americans lived. For example, Mary Garner said that when she was hired out in northern Kentucky, she had sometimes attended the Cincinnati AME church. Her experience in an independent black church—and an AME one at that—introduced her to a vibrant free black community that practiced a liberatory version of Christianity. Although she had been a Christian for two decades, there were no black churches in Richwood or Boone County, where they lived as slaves. Those experiences in the Cincinnati church undoubtedly affected her spirituality, view of bondage, and desire for freedom.10 Nor was freedom an ideal or remote fantasy for the Garners. Freedom was not a distant place outside of their grasp or awareness; freedom was sixteen miles away, and they knew the route.
A successful escape required careful planning, coordinated efforts, resources, advance knowledge of the geography and terrain, and the assistance of free blacks. The Garner escape was not impulsive; it was the result of at least a month of careful planning and coordination. Young Simon was the engine behind the entire scheme. Although they all collectively decided that they would escape, he made all the plans and supplied every resource they needed, including geographical knowledge, transportation, a pistol for protection, and a safe house.
The escape plan hinged on making contact with black Cincinnati because the family needed people to assist them on the other side of the Ohio River. This support was critical: fugitive slaves with friends and kin in free states who were willing to provide assistance had better chances of success. In December 1855, Simon Jr. had accompanied Thomas W. Marshall, the nineteen-year-old son of his owner, to Cincinnati to drive hogs in for slaughter and sale, as he had done so many times before. The men had grown up at the same time and may have played together as children. Of the relationship, Thomas Marshall said that he had always treated young Simon as more of a companion than a slave. But by the time they were adults, few would have defined them as friends—largely because the racial and status boundaries between them had hardened, creating an unbridgeable gulf. For Simon Jr. this trip’s significance had nothing to do with work or male bonding; indeed, the trip proved to be a crucial factor in finalizing the Garners’ plans to escape. During that December trip, Thomas made the critical mistake of giving Simon Jr. some freedom to visit his wife’s relatives, Sarah and Joseph Kite. The Kites’ son, Elijah, was Peggy’s first cousin. Peggy, young Simon, and Elijah had spent some portion of their childhoods together in the same Richwood neighborhood before Elijah escaped in 1850.11
After taking leave of his young owner, Simon Jr. had inquired of several African Americans on the street where to find Joseph and Sarah Kite’s home. Most African Americans living in Cincinnati then knew who Joseph Kite was and where he lived. A man named Edward John Wilson directed young Simon to the Kite home on Sixth Street, east of Broadway, near the Bethel AME Church.12
Joseph Kite had been born into bondage on March 16, 1787, in Culpeper Court House, Virginia, where he spent the first sixteen years of his life. By the time he was thirty years old, his owner relocated to east Tennessee. Joseph eventually ended up in Boone County, Kentucky—likely owned by George Kite of Burlington, who had an enslaved workforce of seven. In Boone County, Joseph had met his wife, Sarah, who was nearly twenty years his junior. They had at least one child together, Elijah. Joseph hired his own time and earned enough money to eventually purchase his freedom in 1825. He immediately moved to Cincinnati, joining a heavy stream of African Americans who shed their slave status, legally or otherwise, and settled in Cincinnati, “Queen City of the West,” in the 1820s. Joseph Kite bore the distinction of being among only a small number of African Americans who lived in the city before the great exodus of 1829, when impending mob violence precipitated the historic exodus of half of the black population. Here, at least, jobs abounded to nearly the same extent as the racism and legal proscriptions black settlers faced.