When this boy was brought to Dr. Young, his name being William, the same as mine, my mother was ordered to change mine to something else. This, at the time, I thought to be one of the most cruel acts that could be committed upon my rights.

For instance in an 1847 lecture to the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Salem Massachusetts he said "Were I about to tell you the evils of Slavery to represent to you the Slave in his lowest degradation I should wish to take you one at a time and whisper it to you. In freedom he took the names of Wells Brown a Quaker friend who helped him after his escape by providing food clothes and some money. Young.

William Wells Brown (November 6 1814 – November 6 1884) was a prominent African-American abolitionist lecturer novelist playwright and historian. After his freedom was purchased by a British couple in 1854 he and his family returned to the US where he rejoined the abolitionist lecture circuit.