Born into slavery on a farm near Luray, Virginia, as Bethany Johnson, married twice, first to an enslaved man, Jerry Fickland, with whom she had a daughter, Charlotte.

She was sold on an auction block to her enslaver, George J. Adams, who brought her to Providence, Rhode Island, and later to Worcester, Massachusetts.

Around 1815, Bethany Johnson was born into slavery on the Pass Run farm, near Luray, in what is now Page County, Virginia.

[4][d] Lucy was unmarried, and she and the people she enslaved moved in with her sister Nasenith Fletcher and David Kibbler, after they were married on January 25, 1827.

[13] Kibbler's brother Jerry and sister Sally were converted Methodists, who found religion after attending a camp meeting.

They outfitted a schoolhouse building in Luray to serve as a venue for church services and revival meetings and encouraged Veney to become a Christian.

[10][14] Then let this feeble body fail, Or let it faint or die, My soul shall quit this mournful vale, And soar to worlds on high, Shall join those distant saints,

[10][16] Around the late 1830s, Bethany Johnson married Jerry Fickland, an enslaved man who lived seven miles from her on the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

[18][19] They continued to live at the plantations of their enslavers and could only visit one another when they were given permission and received a pass to travel on the roads without being picked up as runaways.

[18] Owned by the indebted Jonas Mannyfield (also spelled Menefee), Fickland was taken to Little Washington, Virginia slave pen, where he was to be auctioned around March 1843.

[6] Realizing that her daughter would be subject to owner's sexual abuse, without a means of redress, she said of her feelings from that time,[25] My dear white lady, in your pleasant home made joyous by the tender love of husband and children all your own, you can never understand the slave mother's emotions as she clasps her new-born child, and knows that a master's word can at any moment take it from her embrace; and when, as was mine, that child is a girl, and from her own experience she sees its almost certain doom is to minister to the unbridled lust of the slave-owner, and feels that the law holds over her no protecting arm, it is not strange that, rude and uncultured as I was, I felt all this, and would have been glad if we could have died together there and then.She and her daughter were sold to John Printz Sr. of Luray at Veney's request.

[27] She was brought to the slave auction in Richmond, Virginia, and she pretended to be sick by putting baking soda in her mouth before bidding began.

She supported herself and her son by keeping wages early by being hired out and paying a $30 annual fee to McCoy for his share of her earnings.

Frank claimed that Veney was his ninth of twenty-five wives in an article published by The Page News and Courier in 1915.

[4] It was too dangerous for a lone Black woman to travel to Virginia to visit her family following John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (October 1859) and the commencement of the American Civil War (1861–1865).

[6] Feeling comfortable there, knowing that she was safe from being sold on auction blocks, she remained in Worcester after the Adams' family returned to Providence.

[30][f] After the end of the Civil War, Veney collected family members that she missed dearly and brought them to live in New England.

She started with her daughter, son-in-law Aaron Jackson, and grandchild, who lived adjacent to her, and then made three more trips to move 16 more relatives north.

[31] Jared Silverstein, author of The Faith of a Woman: a Slave Narrative of Love, Despair, and Atonement said, "Her short yet powerful narrative reveals how her unremitting faith in God empowered her to navigate the most trying of circumstances, from childhood as a slave to adulthood as a woman fighting for her freedom.

[4] In Collected Black Women's Narratives, Anthony Gerard recognized Veney—along with Susie King Taylor, Nancy Prince, and Louisa Picquet—as a "woman [who] strove to maintain her dignity and independence in an increasingly violent and consistently racist America."

He further states that her narrative documents "Veney's experiences in slavery and in freedom and her spiritual growth throughout her life" and "revealed her defiance, ingenuity, fortitude, and independence.