Cecelia and Fanny

Cecelia was a fifteen-year-old slave when she accompanied her mistress Frances "Fanny" Thruston Ballard on a holiday trip to Niagara Falls in 1846. While there, Cecelia made the decision to cross the Niagara River to freedom in Canada, leaving her enslaved mother and brother behind in Kentucky. Relationships between escaped slaves and their former owners are rare and a cache of letters from Fanny to Cecelia confirms their extraordinary link. Cecelia and Fanny's lives were very different. Fanny stayed in Louisville, married, raised a family and endured the war and its aftermath with difficulty but was protected by her wealth and status. Cecelia also married in Canada but lost her husband and then moved to Rochester, New York and remarried. This husband went off to fight in the Civil War. In 1865 Cecelia returned to Louisville and renewed her contact with Fanny and her family. Fanny's son recorded all the information he could in 1899 and preserved the correspondence between Fanny and Cecelia.