“Death of ‘General Jackson’:
The Famous Old Colored Centenarian
 Succumbing at Last to the Pressure of Time, Quietly Dies at the Age of 106 Years”, Daily Local News (West Chester, Pa.), April 23, 1883.

“…He was born the slave of Betsy Jacobs, near Baltimore, Md., about the year 1778.  His mistress married Benjamin Fowler, who was so cruel to his slaves that he was murdered by them, for which crime three of them were hung.  His second master, Benjamin Walters, was as much of a tyrant as the first, and his inhuman usage was such as to cause Jackson to resolve to run away.  He passed through Baltimore, the next night slept in a fodder barn, and the third day was arrested by a man on the road as a runaway, but managed to escape from him, and at night arrived at Port Deposit bridge, the gates of which were shut and locked.  The Susquehanna rolled between him and freedom [evidence that Port Deposit was seen as a safe haven by runaway slaves].  Goaded on by desperation, he scaled the gates, and after a hard struggle safely landed on the opposite side…He said he was a man of about thirty-five years of age when he ran away, which would place it about the year 1813 [the bridge in question would have been the Rock Run covered bridge, built by Theodore Burr, but construction did not actually begin until 1817, so the date of Jackson’s escape is off by at least a few years]…he [eventually] became one of the principal wood-sawyers of the borough [of West Chester]…He married, March 28, 1833, Frances Green, who was bought from slavery when she was seven years old, afterwards enticed South and [re-]sold into slavery, from which she was rescued by Thaddeus Stevens and others; she then moved to West Chester, where she became acquainted with the 'General', was married, and where she died, February 26, 1868.

She was quite a noted fortune-teller.  For fear of being discovered and returned to slavery, Jackson’s lips were closely sealed; his most intimate friends could hardly, if ever, get him to mention his earlier history, until after he had availed himself of his franchise by casting his vote as a citizen of the United States, when he began to realize that he was ‘truly free’…”