*Born to a house servant on a plantation in Kentucky
*Described as "mulatto" she may have been the daughter of the plantation owner, John Pollard Gaines
*She married one of her fellow slaves, Robert Garner and quickly became pregnant. Her son was named Thomas.
*The plantation was sold to Gaines' younger brother, Archibald Gaines.
*She then had three children (all described as mulatto) about 5-7 months after Archibald and his wife had their children. She named them Samuel, Mary and Priscilla.
MARGARET GARNER
Lucy Stone
"The faded faces of the Negro children tell too plainly to what degradation the female slaves submit. Rather than give her daughter to that life, she killed it. If in her deep maternal love she felt the impulse to send her child back to God, to save it from coming woe, who shall say she had no right not to do so?"
The family, along with about a dozen others, fled to Cincinnatti over the Ohio River during one of the coldest winters on record. They hid with help from abolitionist, Levi Coffin.
Slave catchers and US Marshals arrived at their safe house and stormed it. They struggled but Margaret was found after having killed her 2 year-old daughter with a knife and wounding her other children. She planned on killing all of them and herself.
Margaret was pregnant at the time of their escape.