Road to Freedom: Bethany Veney

Luray, Virginia

A new interpretive sign commemorates Bethany Veney, who wrote one of the few slave autobiographies from Virginia. See my 2018 post for a link to her short book, which I found fascinating.

Born into slavery on a farm just east of Luray around 1813, Bethany Veney lived a remarkable life of faith, resilience, strength, and forgiveness. Her 1889 autobiography, Aunt Betty’s Story: The Narrative of Bethany Veney, a Slave Woman, recounted her experiences both while enslaved in the Shenandoah Valley, and as a free woman in New England.

Bethany had several owners in Page County, one of "a most violent temper," but found comfort in her religious faith. She met and married a fellow slave, Jerry Fickland, but they were separated when he was sold and taken south. "I stifled my anger and grief..." Bethany remembered. "So we parted forever, in this world."

Bethany's daughter with Jerry, Charlotte, was born in 1844. But the joy of her birth was tempered by fear. "You can never understand the slave mother's emotions as she clasps her new-born child," she said, "And knows that a master's word can at any moment take it from her embrace."

In the 1850s, she married Frank Veney, gave birth to a son, Joe, and earned enough money to rent her own home. She and Joe were purchased by a northerner in 1858, taken to Rhode Island in 1859, and then freed. Soon after, John Brown's 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry and the Civil War cut off communication with her "old home."

Joe sickened and died in late 1859. Bethany moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, where she built a new life and become a successful businesswoman. When the war ended, she journeyed back to Luray where, "I found my daughter Charlotte grown to womanhood, married, and had one child." She brought Charlotte and her family (and eventually 16 family members) back north.

With the help of a close friend of Frederick Douglass, Bethany published Aunt Betty's Story in 1889. She died in Charlotte's home in 1916.