Life in Slavery and First Years of Freedom
Childhood and Adolescence in Louisville
Cecelia came to the household of Louisville businessman Charles W. Thruston in 1831, when she was a baby in the arms of her 17-year-old mother, Mary. The Thrustons were wealthy urban slaveholders – according to tax lists, in 1847 Charles W. Thurston was enslaving 11 people. That number would dwindle in following years but would never fall to zero.
Charles’s daughter Fanny Thruston was five years older than Cecelia, and the two grew up alongside each other. But whatever illusion of equality may have existed between them in girlhood diminished when Fanny came of age and Cecelia was assigned to be her personal maidservant, solidifying the “mistress/slave” relationship between them.
Putting Down Roots in Canada
When Cecelia freed herself, she took the full name “Cecelia Jane Reynolds” and settled in Toronto. In November 1846, while still a teenager with no connections in a strange country, she was legally married to Benjamin Pollard Holmes, who was 33 and already had two sons of his own. In March 1854, the couple purchased a lot of property. In 1853 or 1854, Cecelia gave birth to a daughter, Mamie.
By this point, Cecelia had reached many of the milestones of freedom dreamed of during enslavement: she’d given herself her own name, become legally married, owned property, and had a child born into freedom. But there was one dream she hadn’t yet fulfilled. She’d left behind family in Louisville – her mother Mary and brother Edward – and she wanted to help liberate them as well. So, beginning the in the early 1850s, Cecelia rekindled her relationship with Fanny Thruston, now Fanny Ballard, and started writing to her in hopes of securing her family’s freedom.