- JOSIAH HENSON Josiah Henson spent thirty years on a plantation in Montgomery County, Maryland before he escaped slavery and became a Methodist preacher, abolitionist, lecturer, and founder of a cooperative colony of former slaves in Canada. His memoirs, published in 1849, provided Harriet Beecher Stowe with her model of Uncle Tom. Henson describes his father's reaction to an overseer's attempt ...aalbc.com/authors/josiah.htm