My problem wouldn't be my back story - my problem would be that I'm black lol. It would be 1816 in Ohio at least (yay Union), and I'm pale enough to pass as white (I'm paler than half of the white people I know), but my nose and lips and current hairstyle are dead giveaways, so I'd definitely be considered a free or runaway "mulatto" and treated accordingly (aka terribly). Which brings up another problem: I wouldn't have free papers with a master's seal or papers proving I was born free. If I did, at least I'd be kinda-sorta safe from slave catchers. SO hard pass on ever going back in time before like 1969 lol.

If I had to go, I would claim I'm a young freeborn widow (I'm too old to be simply unmarried by their standards) and try to get a domestic gig with a pro-abolitionist employer. If he was attractive and relatively kind I'd seduce him and curry his favor - just like definitely two and maybe three of my great-etc grandmothers did, if ancestry.com + all the family stories are correct.