Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) was born into slavery in North Carolina. She became a mother at sixteen, a fugitive slave at twenty-two, and, in January 1861 at the age of forty-eight, the author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. During the Civil War, Jacobs and her daughter, Louisa, returned to the South to aid African American refugees. Following the Civil War, they built an orphanage and home for African American children and elders in Savannah, Georgia.