Charity Bowery was interviewed in 1847-1848 in New York at age sixty-five by Lydia Maria Child. She had been enslaved as a house servant. She says that on Sundays, I have seen the Negroes up in the country going away under large oaks, and in secret places, sitting in the woods with spelling books.  The brightest and best men were killed in Nat’s time.  Such ones are always suspected.  All the colored folks were afraid to pray in the time of the old prophet Nat.  There was no law about it; but the whites reported it round among themselves, that if a note was heard, we should have some dreadful punishment; and after that, the low whites would fall upon any slaves they heard praying or singing a hymn, and often killed them before their masters or mistress could get to them.