Rambles of a Runaway from Southern Slavery tells of an extraordinary life in and out of slavery in the United States and Canada. Born Elijah Turner in the Virginia Tidewater, circa 1810, the author eventually procured freedom papers from a man he resembled and took the man’s name, Henry Goings. His life story takes us on an epic journey, traveling from his Virginia birthplace through the cotton kingdom of the Lower South, and upon his escape from slavery, through Tennessee and Kentucky, then on to the Great Lakes region of the North and to Canada. His Rambles show that slaves were found not only in fields but also on the nation’s roads and rivers, perpetually in motion in massive coffles or as solitary runaways. A freedom narrative as well as a slave narrative, this compact yet detailed book illustrates many important developments in antebellum America, such as the large-scale forced migration of enslaved people from long-established slave societies in the eastern United States to new settlements on the cotton frontier, the political-economic processes that framed that migration, and the accompanying human anguish. Goings’s life and reflections serve as important primary documents of African American life and of American national expansion, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. This edition features an informative and insightful introduction by Calvin Schermerhorn.

Helen Anne Hirst (b. 1936) lived in Boston, Massachusetts and moved with her parents to Cheyenne, Wyoming. She married Gary Leonard Christy (b. 1936) in Cheyenne in 1958. Their ancestors lived in California, Nebraska, Illinois, Wyoming, Denmark, Missouri, Germany, Ireland, France, Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and elsewhere.

Rees Shelby was born ca. 1721 in Tregaron, Cardiganshire, Wales to Evan and Catherine (Morgan) Shelby. By 1734 the family had immigrated to America, settled in Pennsylvania and was " ... living in the Cumberland Valley on the Conococheague Creek and Muddy Run at "Black Walnut Point" 1 1/2 miles west of present day Green Castle."--Page 43. Rees Shelby and his wife Mary were married in 1738 at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They lived in Maryland, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and South Carolina. Rees died 1811/12 " ... on his plantation in Chesterfield County, South Carolina near the hamlet of Crowbark ..."--Page 85.