American Historical Ephemera & Photography, including African Americana

BRUNER, PETER. A Slave's Adventures Toward Freedom; Not Fiction, but the True Story of a Struggle. 8vo, 54pp. Original dark blue cloth with title on the upper cover. Oxford, OH, [1918?]. Portrait plate of the author, plus additional illustrations from photographs. First edition autobiographical account of Bruner's life as a slave, his brutal treatment, enlistment, and post-war life in Oxford, Ohio.

Born into slavery in Winchester, Clark County, Kentucky in 1845, Bruner bore the surname of his enslaver, John Bell Bruner, who was in all likelihood his father as well. Bruner was removed from his mother's care at a young age, and suffered physical violence while enslaved. After multiple escape attempts, he finally escaped slavery and joined the Union Army serving in Co. C, 12th Regiment Heavy Artillery U.S. Colored Troops, as part of the USCT. After his discharge from the army, Bruner moved in 1866 to Oxford, Ohio, where he worked as a janitor at Miami University for more than forty years. He learned to read and write, ultimately writing his autobiography with the assistance of his daughter. The introduction to his autobiography offers Bruner's reasons for sharing his remarkable story: "In this book I have given the actual experiences of my own life. I thought in putting it in this form it might be of some inspiration to struggling men and women. / In this great, free land of ours, every person, no matter how humble or how great seems the handicap, by industry and saving, can reach a position of independence and be of service to mankind. / Peter Bruner."

Brignano #38, giving the date of publication as 1925; OCLC giving the date as 1918. A scarce and illustrative slave narrative made more desirable by virtue of having been written not by a white biographer, but by Bruner himself.