The Underground Railroad

Chapter 1 Summary

This chapter introduces us to Ajarry, Cora’s grandmother: “This was her grandmother talking” (3). We are told that when Caesar first approached Cora about running north, she refused.

Ajarry never saw water before she arrived at the port of Ouidah, where she was kept in a dungeon prior to the ship’s arrival. Enslavers kidnapped the men of her village and returned for the women. Survivors informed her that the enslavers bashed her father’s head in and left him for dead when he could not keep up. Her mother had passed away several years prior.

After being sold and traded several times on the journey to the fort, Ajarry was put on a ship called the Nanny. The ship’s last stop before the open Atlantic was in Liverpool. Because of her “tender age” (4), sailors did not initially rape Ajarry, but this reprieve only lasted six weeks. Twice, she tried to die by suicide—first by starving and then by trying to jump off the ship. Sailors—men “versed in the schemes and inclinations of chattel” (4)—stopped her both times.

Although her family tried to stay together at auction, Ajarry became separated from the members of her extended family when they were sold to Portuguese traders and put on the Vivilia, which was next sighted adrift four weeks later—with everyone on board dead from plague.