Chapter 1 A Narrative -of the- Life and Adventures -of- Venture A Native of Africa, But Resident Above Sixty Years in the United States Of America.; Chapter 2 Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge.; Chapter 3 Life of James Mars, a Slave Born and Sold in Connecticut.; Chapter 4 The Life of William J. Brown, of Providence, R. I. with Personal Recollections of Incidents in Rhode Island.; Chapter 5 Life of George Henry. Together with A Brief History of the Colored People in America.;

An anthology of five of the best autobiographical narratives detailing black life in New England in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The volume is accompanied by Cottrol's introduction, which discusses their significance and the window that they open on the lives of black New Englanders as they moved from eighteenth century slavery to freedom and the struggle for equality in the nineteenth century.