Mr. Goosland, Oberlin found his family after 25 years. The newspaper quotes letter he wrote to his wife in 1847, shortly after he was sold and taken from Wytheville, VA, to Mobile, AL.
Bigglestone, William E., They Stopped in Oberlin: Black Residents and Visitors of the Nineteenth Century (1981), 86 (accessed books.google.com): "Matthew Goosland, born a slave in Virginia between 1811 and 1824, was sold in 1846 and taken to Alabama. A few years before the Civil War he purchased his freedom and by 1860 had made his way to Oberlin because he wanted to attend school..."
History of Lorain County Ohio (1879), 186 (accessed books.google.com): "About 1868, Rev. Mathew Goosland, who had been a slave, and had bought his own freedom, began to hold meetings for the colored people in Peck's hall, and members of the [Oberlin] college faculty preached occasionally to them."
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