>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C. >> Elizabeth Peterson: My
name is Betsy Peterson. I'm the director of the American
Folklife Center here at the Library of Congress, and I'd like to
welcome you for the latest in our ongoing Benjamin
Botkin lecture series. The Botkin series allows
the American Folklife Center to do a couple of things. Most importantly, it allows
us to highlight the work of leading scholars in folklore,
ethnomusicology, oral history, and other cultural studies. And for the center in the library,
it also is an important part of our acquisition activity. Each lecture is videotaped
and makes its way into the permanent collections of
our center, and also makes its way onto the web as a webcast
that allows us to share this with patients throughout the
world and for generations to come. So with that said, please turn off
any electronic devices you might have right now or you will
be in our archive forever. And today I have a wonderful honor. I have the honor of introducing
a distinguished folklorist and dear colleague, Jane
Beck, who is the founder and executive director emeritus
of the Vermont Folklife Center. Beck first became interested in folklore while an undergraduate
student at Middlebury College, and went on to earn a Masters
and Doctorate in folklore at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1983 she returned to Vermont to
found the Vermont Folklife Center in Middlebury, and subsequently
served as its executive director until her retirement in 2007. And during this time she
grew the Folklife Center into an incredible influential and
robust institution that continues to provide outstanding
public education, research, and archival services
to the state of Vermont. Jane is the author of numerous
articles, radio programs, curricula, slideshows, videos,
books, museum exhibits, you name it, she's done it. Jane has also published in
numerous journals and magazines, including Canadian Folklore,
Yankee, and Vermont Folklife and has been aired frequently on stations including Vermont Public
Radio and Adirondack Public Radio, and in fact is the recipient of
a Peabody Award for radio work that she did focusing on Daisy
Turner back in the '70s or '80s. >> '90s. >> Elizabeth Peterson: '90s, okay. Over the course of
her impressive career, Jane has also served two terms
as president and several years as board member for the
American Folklore Society. She was a trustee for
Vermont Shelburne Museum. She sat on the Smithsonian
Advisory Council for the Bureau of Folklife Programs
and Cultural Studies, and most significantly
certainly for all of us Folklife Center folks here,
she was a member of the Board of the American Folklife Center. Jane has received numerous
prestigious awards, as you can imagine with
that sort of resume, including the governor's
extraordinary Vermonter Award in 1990. Ah, okay, a Peabody
Award in 1990 as well, and the name of the radio program on Daisy Turner was
called Journey's End. She's also an honorary doctorate
from Middlebury College, a recipient of the
Benjamin Botkin Award from the American Folklore Society,
the Vermont Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, and
a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Center for
Research in Vermont. So today we are delighted
to have Jane here to discuss her latest
book, Daisy Turner's Kin, An African American Family,
which has just been published by University of Illinois Press
and, following today's talk, Jane will be out front for
those of you who might wish to purchase a copy or bring
the copy you already have and have Jane sign it. It's really exciting. This is a culmination of
a life's work and focus, and so we're really honored to
have Dr. Jane Beck here today to talk about Daisy Turner. [ Applause ] >> Jane Beck: Thanks, Betsy,
I don't know where you got all that stuff from, but it's
certainly not something I gave you. I apologize. Now let's hope this
is all going to work. Here we go. Okay, this is Daisy Turner. And the fascinating thing to
me about Daisy Turner's Kin, is that it's a family story
told over four generations over two centuries by the
Turner's for the Turner's. And I know of no other family
story of African American descent that goes from Africa to a
small town in Grafton, Vermont. This story was placed in a
larger context of social, cultural, historical framework. And the important thing to remember
about Daisy Turner is she was first and foremost a storyteller, and she comes out of the
West African griot tradition. Her grandfather was a Yoruba. Griot is really the keeper of
knowledge of his community, and he was a singer, a storyteller,
a historian, and a genealogist, and Daisy served all those
functions for her family. Now I first heard about Daisy
Turner, I was sent a clipping by Margaret MacArthur,
the musician and singer, and she said to me, you
should go see Daisy. She -- I always meant
to go collect her songs. She's got a million songs. She's got all kinds of stories. And I had just -- at
that point I was working for the Vermont Arts Council. I had done a big folk
art exhibit and I was -- my job was to bring the traditional
arts to the general public of Vermont, and I thought,
hmm, in the clipping it said that Daisy Turner was 100. I thought -- and at that
point, this was 1983. There are been two articles
that had come out saying that Vermont was the
whitest state in the union, and here was Daisy Turner and I
thought her voice needs to be heard by particularly the schoolchildren,
but other Vermonters as well. So I was dying to meet her. And so I said about that, and I
always looked for an introduction. Well, I -- you can get an
introduction to the Governor of Vermont without much trouble, but I couldn't get an
introduction to Daisy. And then pretty soon I
learned she had a gun and was not afraid of using it. So I decided to write her a letter. And then I waited on
tenterhooks for about a week, and finally called, no answer. And I began to worry that
maybe her health was bad and maybe she couldn't see me, or
maybe she didn't hear the phone. So I called the next day and
I -- as I said, she was 100. I get this ringing hello,
and I say, Miss Turner? Yes. And so I started in on
my spiel about how I wanted to come see her and
yadda, yadda, yadda. Well, she listened for about five
seconds and turned the tables on me and bellowed are you
a prejudiced woman? And I was totally taken off guard
and I said, no, I don't think so. And she said, well come any time. I said, how about next Wednesday,
and we were off and running. And I went down to see her, and
she was a marvelous storyteller. She held me spellbound, but I
didn't know what I was hearing. I was hearing about
Virginia, and about Africa, and about New Orleans,
and then Maine. And, as you know, oral history and memory are considered
notoriously unreliable, but always meaningful. And my job I felt was to
determine how this was meaningful. Now, memory and oral history are
subjective, they're personal, and often when a memory is
laid down and you return to it you feel the
emotion that you once felt, and this sometimes colors memories, but it is also important
in understanding voice. Now at the center of Daisy's
storytelling was her father. And I'll just play you a brief clip to show you how she brings
you right into the scene. >> Daisy Turner: And then on the top of it all [inaudible]
terrible situation, Lincoln was shot, shot dead. Well then father said, as he
with his group were getting ready to be mustered out, they heard my
father [inaudible] again and again, he heard the [inaudible]
rode running away from after shooting Lincoln. They were on the edge of
Washington ready to be mustered out. And so father said what a time. >> Jane Beck: Now her father
was a charismatic, powerful man. He was a marvelous storyteller. He was born in 1845 and, amazingly,
he was willing to look back. Most people who had been
enslaved did not look back. They wanted to look forward,
but he wanted his family to know where he had come from. And so he was a fine storyteller. He was a good chronicler of events
obviously from his own point of view, but his stories, the
Turner narrative are what -- are full of what I call
touchstone stories, stories that cover pivotal events, life-changing moments,
full of emotion. For example, when he first
realized he was a slave, or later how he killed
the overseer and was able to turn his back on slavery. These were Touchstone stories. Now, his narrative begins about
1802 to 1810 when his grandmother, or Daisy's great-grandmother,
who was an English woman went out to Africa on her honeymoon in
one of her father's trading vessels. And Daisy always said
they went to Cape Town. And I didn't understand, Cape
Town to me meant South Africa and I didn't understand
how that could be if her great-grandfather was Yoruba. But what I learned was the
town behind Cape Coast Castle. Cape Coast Castle was the
biggest English fort and the port that the shipping guy
always sent his ships to. The town behind it was Cape Town
and then things fell into place. So they -- Daisy's
great-grandmother went down -- downwind and here is Cape Coast
Castle, down around Accra, and somewhere around Porto Novo
[inaudible] the ship was wrecked, and it experienced
probably a tornado. A tornado is the line storm that
comes before the rainy season or after the rainy season. And the family story was
the ship was wrecked, her husband was drowned,
and she was saved by an African chief's son,
who was a great swimmer. And it was very important that he was a swimmer,
was always underscored. And you don't swim on
the coast of Benin. The surf was huge. There were all kinds of currents,
and then if that was not enough, there were all kinds of sharks. So the English woman was rescued,
but never returned to England. Instead, she had a son by her
savior and he grew up as a Yoruba and became involved first in trade
and then eventually slave trading. And, as Daisy said, got
too smart for his own good. He was captured as a slave
himself and brought to this country in a schooner -- - a Spanish
schooner called the Phoenix out of Havana, Cuba. He was sold in New Orleans
to a man called John Golden. And he was sold -- he always
said he was sold cheap because he was obstreperous
and didn't obey orders and caused a lot of trouble. He was -- I later found
through research, that he was probably sold illegally, and that may well have
been why he was sold cheap. But the important thing to
the family is to remember that he didn't go along
with anything. He was a fighter. And this was very important
within the family culture. So he was sold to a man called John
Golden in Port Royal, Virginia. This is about 1830. Oh, yeah, 1830, and John
Golden was a sporting man. And Daisy's grandfather
refused to work. He was not going to be a slave. A slave was beneath him. And so John Golden put him to
fighting gamecocks and to boxing. And boxing, this is actually
Tom Molyneux and the Joe Cribb. Tom Molyneux was a slave boxer who eventually gained his
freedom through boxing. But the boxing matches
would've been between the -- to enslaved men of
different plantations. This was the underbelly of slavery. It was not widely known and it
was full of drinking and betting. And they say that there
was more money lost or won on these boxing matches than
on any of the horse races. So Daisy's grandfather
became a local champion. And I suspect that his owner, Jack
Golden, bet on all of these matches because he came from a long
line of yeoman farmers, but suddenly he is able to buy 720
acres on the Rappahannock River, prime land, land that only the
aristocratic plantation owners could afford. And I suspect that
this money was gained through betting on these matches. He was also described as a man of
strong but uncultivated intellect. And that says to me, okay, he
was probably a yeoman farmer with nouveau riche and was moving into the aristocratic
plantation owner's land and they didn't like it much. Anyway, he -- this was his home and
Daisy's grandfather continued to box for him and he eventually ended up with 2,000 acres
on the Rappahannock. Whoops. Daisy's grandfather
continued to box until he killed a Jamaican
in the ring, and then he refused
to fight anymore. He was still his own man. And nothing John Golden could say
would make him fight, and he was set to building a wheat barn, a rafter
fell on him and he was killed. This boxing match I think
also affected John Golden, because he did something
really out of character. He was a member of the
Liberty Baptist Church, but up until this point
had not been active in the Liberty Baptist Church. And he took a group of parishioners
out of the Liberty Baptist Church and founded the Bethesda
Baptist Church, which was based on no selling of, no drinking
of alcoholic beverages. And I think that was his penance. And he went about building
the Bethesda Baptist Church. Now Alec was born in 1845 as I said. This is where his mother's
house was, just sort of on -- this is the big house,
just on the outskirts. And we know this through John
Golden's will, and he mentions Rose, who was Alec's mother and also
the plantation seamstress. He mentions where her
cabin was in his will. She had a small house and
garden -- cabin and garden. And the mistress would come down
bringing all kinds of clothing to be fitted, or Rose also
made all of the slave garments, but she also made -- she
was working on a dress for Zethi [assumed spelling], who
was three years older than Alec and was about to have a birthday. Now Alec, at five, was playing
with both white and black children. There was no sort of
discrimination between the children until they were a little older. And he suddenly began to realize
he was dressed differently. He just had a kind of smock and they
all had shoes and little ruffles on their sleeves and pants. And he asked his mother why
he was dressed differently, and she made him a
pair of red moccasins, and he was so proud of
those red moccasins. And Daisy said used to strut
around in his red moccasins. But he noticed that his mother took
them off every time a white person came down. And one day he was strutting around
and Mistress Golden came down and caught him in these red
moccasins and threw them in the fire, at which Alec
went berserk, he's five. He bit her, he scratched
her, he punched her. She fell in a swoon
and was carted off. But all he remembered was the
awful look in his mother's eye. She just was frightened
to death that he was going to be sold off the plantation. And this obviously did not
happen, but this was the real fear. She was able to pull herself
together and finish Zethi's dress, and the next day they took
it up to the big house. And through this hall here,
which was loaded with tables of sweet meats and cookies
and all kinds of good things, and they went in and they went
up this enclosed staircase. Rose tried the dress on Zethi. It fit fine. She called Alec to come. He was already charging down
the stairs and he went straight for a plate of ginger
soldier cookies and began to bite their heads off. So he was in trouble all over again. And this time he was punished. He was punished by
a guy called Pusley. Pusley was the overseer. And the Turners all
called him Pusley, but actually his name Presley,
but I like Pusley better. And so Alec was made to carry water
to the slaves that were working up and down this long field. It's amazing to me that
these fields are still there. He did this for two or three weeks. And then went on -- he
took care of the cattle and the horses and the sheep. And then he graduated again
to working in the milk house. And Zethi, as I said, was
three years older than he was and a great friend, and she
told him that he must get away. He must get away to Vermont
where he would be free and she would help him. Now whether she was an
abolitionist or not, we don't know. We know she was the
granddaughter of Golden, perhaps it was a generational
gap, who knows. But anyway, she was ready
to help him and she began to teach him how to read. And it was behind the milk house
that she would bring down her primer and he began to learn how to read. One day her grandmother caught
them and sent Zethi to the house, lashed Alec with her whip. He held onto this primer
as she tries to take it away, bled on the primer. And this primer he carried when he
eventually escaped the plantation, he carried with him
throughout the Civil War. That was how important it
was for him and the signal that he had been learning
how to read. Now Alec did other jobs
at -- on the plantation. And one of them was
hauling [inaudible]. One of the things that he loved
was the spirituals that were all -- the work songs that were often sung. And he told his -- he taught
his children all these songs and when they sang them. And so here is an example of one
he would sing while [inaudible]. [ Singing ] Now this is -- this is now 1862 and
Confederate soldiers were camped out on the Golden property. And in the Golden house today
you can still see the stuff that they had lent to some of
the soldiers, two bed quilts, two white counterpanes,
father's blanket. It sort of brings you right
back to when Alec was there. At the same time, across
the Rappahannock, the first New Jersey
cavalry was camped out, and Ferdinand Dayton was
the assistant surgeon. And he came across the river and
Alec told his children later, he didn't know what
made him so brave, but he talked with Ferdinand Dayton. And Dayton told him when he got
together the people that wanted to escape to wave white bedsheets
and he would come across, and that is how Alec escaped
and brought Captain Broderick, heard Alec talking with
another slave who had escaped about some kind Confederate
outpost at the Golden plantation, actually John Golden's son, who
was right next to John Golden. And they planned a raid to cross
the river and Alec helped lead this to Tom Golden's -- to the
Chestnut Grove plantation. They captured an outpost
of eight [inaudible]. And while they're doing that
Alec goes half a mile away to where Pusley is living and
shoots him, and that enables him to turn his back on slavery. It was the most important story
that he told over and over. But it allowed him to then
turn that page and think about the rest of his life. He joined the first New Jersey
cavalry, or he worked for Dayton as an orderly and he went on a
campaign up the Shenandoah Valley and then part of the
Virginia campaign, Brandy Station, Gettysburg. And at that point Dayton
helped start up the second New Jersey cavalry, and Alec again was
to go with Dayton. What I learned was that he
had been given a furlough, and they were in Arlington
waiting for orders. The orders came through and Dayton
and his group left for Tennessee, and poor Alec was left behind. The interesting thing is,
he never mentions this, or Daisy never mentioned this. She only thought he fought for
the first New Jersey cavalry. And just think how he must've
felt being left behind. He probably went to City Point. It says he went to City Point. He probably worked
in a hospital there. And the interesting thing is,
he was there for over a year and after the war Dayton came
back and found him, took them back to New Jersey, found him a
job, and got him enrolled in -- to night school, where
Alec spent two years. Then he came back to Washington
through the Freedmen's Bureau, got a job with A. H. Merrill, who
ran a slate quarry, of all places, in Williamsburg, Maine, which
is really the end of the earth. And 38 ex-slaves went up and
worked in this slate quarry. This is Alec right here. And when I saw this I knew
instantly it was Alec, but if you look closely
there is a watch fob there. And here he is again with
it on his wedding day. And he was a -- he used to take
men back and forth from Washington to Maine, and many of the men
could not survive the winter there. And on one of his trips
back he meets Sally Early, who at that point was a girl of 14. He marries her. They have children. They have twins, and
then a third daughter, and she is dying of consumption. And so Merrill gets her
a doctor down in Boston. She hangs on to life. Alec got a job loading
freight at the north station. And then he's scouring the
newspapers for another job and finds one, of all
places, in Grafton, Vermont working for Charles White. He comes up, he checks it out. They tell him Grafton
is a very healthy place, and he said a feeling just
went right through him. He knew that that was
the place for Sally. And they also told him that he would
not be able to earn enough money to put salt in his bread, and he
was determined to prove them wrong. And so he found out that all
Vermonters used 3 1/2 pound axe. He had a 4 pound axe made, and
he cut twice as much lumber. His conduit into the town
was the general store. And he helped unload freight,
he was a good storyteller, he was a wonderful singer, and
the men began to enjoy him. And finally one day was unloading
freight and the storekeeper, Wyman, said you can have -- he
said he wanted some flour, 10 pounds of flour, and Wyman
said you can have that barrel if you can carry it home. And Alec said you're going to
lose because I can do that. >> Daisy Turner: And Bill Wyman
said, if you can carry a barrel of that flour so Sally and the children [inaudible]
I'll give it to you. Well, father said, your loss
because I'll pick it up and I go. So father finally got
[inaudible] got started. So he put the barrel of flour and
he told me many a times just how to do it, just right
[inaudible] and started. When he got to the bridge,
the first bridge out there, he didn't take it all but
he chained it like that, a little like that over, just a
little bit further, because he found that -- he knew he had to make
the hill and the barrel would have to lay a certain way there. So he shifted it then and went home. And my father, [inaudible]
Alexander, my father, I'm proud to be your daughter, went
on up that road and up that hill and across that long field,
because we lived in the shanty, and my father never set that barrel down until he got up
in the shanty door. And there must have been at that
time 40 men all following him with [laughter] jugs of
[inaudible] cider and all. And mother told many a times
how after they all got -- they all got drunk after father
set the barrel of cider down and they all was saluting
him and congratulated on him. And my father carried that barrel
of flour from Grafton Village up on our hilltop for us
children to eat, to have bread. Now that's the truth if I never
speak a word again [laughter]. >> Jane Beck: She's quite
a storyteller, isn't she? Now Alec was -- he came to
Vermont in 1873, and by -- and was known as a laborer
because he was cutting wood, but by 1878 he was
considered a farmer. And what he did was he cleared
the land and then bought it cheap, and eventually build a house. And he owned by the time he
died something like 200 acres. He had local help building the
house, everybody gave a day's work. He was also protected by the
town fathers, I think really from the underlying racism
in Grafton he became sort of their slaves, their
way of helping. And they protected
him and eased his way. And he, once people
realized who he was, what a wonderful guy he
was, they supported him. And he was -- he became very
successful as a farmer in Grafton. And his family became
part of the community. And the kids all went to school. This is Daisy here. This is Susie, she
was a twin of Willie. Willie was kind of obstreperous. He -- they used to
-- the Turners used to sell poultry to
the Boston market. And so Sally, his mother, would be
killing chickens and he wanted -- he noticed that they'd run around
after their heads were lopped off. So he wanted to see if
his sister might run around with her head lopped off. So he went after her
with a 4 pound axe and the mother just
got there in time. So he was a little bit obstreperous. And Alec then -- his
family began to grow and he began to have grandchildren. And the Turner hill property
really became a family seat. And I thought I'd go through just
to give you some idea of his family. And this is one of the
oldest twin daughters, Rose. And the interesting thing
for me about Rose was that she kept an account book, not
really a diary, but she would put down important dates
in that account book. Daisy came to Boston in 1921 and
spent the night, or some such thing. And most of the daughters, about the
time of 1890 when they began to look for jobs, ended up by going
down to the Boston area. Her twin sister, Rachel, worked at
the Everett Hospital outside Boston and became a practical nurse. And Nellie was the
first to get married. Now they also went to
Boston to find husbands, because obviously the
black community in Vermont was nonexistent. And Nelly was the first to marry. That was her son you saw in
the photograph with Alec. And this is he at 21. He was an outstanding
young athlete, a drummer. He was about to go to law school. He went into a race, had an
aneurysm, and died it 21, which was a real tragedy. Linsey Turner was the first son. He born in 1875. And an interesting story
connected with him. He had two sons out of wedlock. One of these was Leslie Rogers. And about 10 years ago I got a call
from his daughter, Janet Severance, who wanted to go to Ireland and
she needed her birth certificate. And when she got her birth
certificate she discovered M, indicating her father's
race and she didn't -- she was 50 and she knew
nothing about this. How would she feel? And she went off to Ireland and sort
of got madder and madder and madder. And her father was dead but
her mother was still alive so when she got back she
questioned her mother. And sure enough, her father was
Linsey's son and had been -- had grown up in a white
family, the Rogers family. Her daughter, Tamara, went and
interviewed her grandmother. Her grandmother was very
uncomfortable talking about this, but Tamara was able to get her
story and it was one of racism. The family -- the mother's
family had disowned her and the community was not
always friendly to them. So Tamara collected all
these stories and told them to her siblings, and also to her
first cousin, who was the son of Janet's brother, and his
name was -- is David Rogers. And when she told him he
pulled off his hat and he said, now I know I why my hair goes
crazy when it rains [laughter]. And then he came back and he said -- he began telling his
friends and they all knew. Grafton had not forgotten. It was David Rogers who we were
able to do a genome test on. He was the son of a son of a son
of a son, and it came back Yoruba, confirming what Daisy had
told me, that they came from the Yoruba ethnic group. Now this is Willie, the same
one that went after his sister with the axe, and he
ended by being a sergeant. This is in World War I. He won the [inaudible] and
he was quite an amazing man. And his twin sister, who wanted
to be a missionary nurse, found she fainted at the sight
of blood, so that escaped her. But her daughter, Ronny
Lanier, became both a missionary and the first black Baptist
minister in New England, and was just a marvelous,
much beloved woman. And she -- in many ways she
encompassed Alec's strong religious underpinnings, but also
she was a great athlete and won some amazing
trophy for having something like 10 letters in high school. And her brother, Chester, won
the Golden Gloves in 1933. So you see, again, this
strain of real prowess and athleticism throughout
the Turner family. Now before -- this is Daisy, but before Daisy was born they had
an eighth son, who was known as -- who was called Alexander, but within
the family was known as Enough. And sadly he died of
pneumonia at nine months, and after him they
had five more girls, Daisy being the first after him. And this is Daisy. Daisy never married, but
she had a torrid love affair with a white man called
Joseph Bonnet down in Boston. And they were supposed to
be married Christmas day and her father took ill
and she went home, he died. By the time she came back she
discovered that this guy had been with another woman, so she
brought suit for breach of promise, a black woman against a white man. Now don't think a white woman
had much of a prayer in hell of winning against a white man. And she had the, what do
you call it, the jurors, 12 white men were jurors. She won a settlement
of $3,500 -- $3,550. And there's a wonderful
photograph of her in the Boston paper saying,
I have been vindicated. So she was tough. Violet was the first to
marry a white man, and Alec, because of slavery, did not
think that that was a good idea. And indeed she had
a hard time of it. George died early, but in the
meantime he had his dose of racism. This card was sent
and Godfrey, his son, kept this all his life
as a stark reminder. And this is Godfrey, who -- this
was his last walk up Turner Hill. He is 88 and every tree,
every stone had a story. And I felt, as I walked up with him, I was suddenly inhabiting
the Turner family legacy. Zebbe was named after
Zethi, the little girl that taught Alec how to read. And she was the first daughter
born in the new house in Vermont. And Evelyn again married a white
man, a Swede, Dave Carlson. And Violet also she
married an Italian, Antonio, and this is Sally here with
one of her famous hands. And here is -- the place really
became a family homestead. The daughters came every summer
for as long as they could. The only one that didn't come
really was Willie, who was working down in New York, and
then eventually in South America for
the Swift Company. But it was totally a family place. And here Alec lived for
50 years, Sally for 60. She recovered within the first
year of being in Vermont. And so two slaves who never could
have dreamed of this felt -- Alec always said that he had
been led to Grafton, Vermont. And Daisy, who kept this story, and
was such a marvelous storyteller, knew that the only way that
the story would survive was to have it in print. That basically ours
is a literate society, and so she began asking
me to write it. And I wasn't at all sure I
was the right person to do it. I wasn't particularly a good writer and I thought maybe an
African American should do it, but eventually I came round. But I said, which she
didn't believe. I think we've got to put, you
know, a larger framework behind it, and I did promise her
that I would do this. But at that point I was
working, I didn't have time. But I felt that the only way
her story really would be taken seriously was to document as much
of it as could be documented. And what I found was
that the stories ended up by being almost flag
posts to historical events. And so her story, this
really vibrant family story, with a distinct voice
about a critical time in our American history
has been preserved thanks to Daisy's ability as a storyteller. And here is one last photograph
of Daisy on her 104 birthday. I thought she was going
to live forever. She recited on that birthday a
poem that went on for 20 minutes. She was just plain amazing. Thank you. [ Applause ] Any questions? Yes. >> Right here. >> Jane Beck: Yes. >> Well, [inaudible] ancestry.com
that people are finding out that more and more
people who thought that they were white
in fact are not. As a matter of fact I think I read
something that said the majority of white Americas have
African American blood in them. And the second thing is
that there is another family that can trace its
ancestry back to Africa, and those are the [inaudible]. >> Jane Beck: Uh-huh. >> Who are local to this area. >> Jane Beck: Oh neat. >> Who worked on the [inaudible]
and then the family took it over and so you'll see in [inaudible] and
they all trace their genealogy back to [inaudible] Jamestown and they
and they have an unbroken history -- >> Jane Beck: Wow. >> Of family from Africa. >> Jane Beck: That's great, yes. >> [inaudible] continues to
be the family genealogist. >> Jane Beck: Neat, thank you. I might add that the
Turner family that is left in Grafton is totally white. The ones that went to Boston
are African American which -- >> Just -- I just wanted to [inaudible] interesting
thing happened to me at the Book Festival this year. I was in the History Pavillion and
somebody walked up to me and said, oh I have Ferguson's [assumed
spelling] in my family and it was a white woman. And I said, oh, where
are your Fergusons from? She said South Carolina. And I said so are my Fergusons. And it went on. And she said what part
of South Carolina. I said Orangeburg, and she said
so are my Fergusons [laughter]. And then she said my Fergusons
were [inaudible] Presbyterian -- or Scottish Methodist ministers. And I said my Fergusons were
all [inaudible] ministers. So we concluded at that point that
we had in fact found the white and black Fergusons who [inaudible]. >> Jane Beck: That's neat. >> How old was she when she died? >> Jane Beck: She was 104. She died not -- maybe within six
months of this last photograph. [ Inaudible Comment ] 1988. Yeah? >> Did she tell you
what made [inaudible]? >> Jane Beck: Did she tell me what? [ Inaudible Comment ] I think mostly for Daisy
it was she was feisty. Yes? >> I saw the picture of the
slave castle [inaudible] castle? >> Jane Beck: Yes. >> And that was where? >> Jane Beck: That was actually
in Ghana, on the [inaudible] Coast and the town behind it was called
Cape Town, which I didn't realize until I was doing research about it. Any, yes? [ Inaudible Comment ] I hope so. You know, you can -- at this
point I'm 75, I can only hope. >> Thank you. >> Jane Beck: Yes? >> Yes, [inaudible] describe some
additional studies beyond world history [inaudible]. What other disciplines did
you dive into [inaudible]? >> Jane Beck: I did
with the plantation. I found the plantation and
the guy that owned it was -- had done some archaeological stuff. And I knew where the graveyard was. I was dying to get him to dig,
you know, where Rose's cabin was. I was given the line of that
from the will of John Golden. But, you know, I didn't do a
lot of archaeological stuff. I wished I could've done -- I mean
I was -- it was private property. I would have, you know,
loved to have done more on the Golden plantation. Yes? >> Did any of the next
generation continue stories? >> Jane Beck: Yes, the
grandchildren all knew. In fact, in the -- in the book -- at one point I was just
going to use Daisy's voice, and then I decided I
should use a family voice, and the family voice incorporates
many of the grandchildren. For example, some of the oldest
grandsons were attracted to Alec as a young boy on the plantation,
and they retained much more than Daisy did, who
didn't really care about being a young
boy on a plantation. And so they had more stories
about that than Daisy did. And they all said that his most
important story was shooting the overseer, and this was something he
told over and over and over again. This raid is well documented, but
nothing about shooting the overseer, and yet I'm absolutely
convinced it happened. He would -- from the rest of his narrative this is not
something he would make up. [ Inaudible Comment ] The raid was 1862, April. >> Were you able to
find census records about the overseer,
I mean, his death or? >> Jane Beck: There was a number
of questions about the overseer. So, no, I was not. And there aren't those
kinds of records. But, you know, his name was Presley
and the records of overseers, you know, it's every 10 years. So I don't -- and there
was some discussion as to whether he was black or white. And there was a slave
called Presley that worked for Jack Golden's father,
was this the Presley? I don't know. That's certainly a question. >> One more question. >> Jane Beck: Yes, yes? >> Can you discuss any of the
research or [inaudible] to the next? >> Jane Beck: Got mixed up? Yes, I'll give you one good example. And that is the story Daisy
told about her grandmother, who was a Cherokee, full-blooded
Cherokee and her grandfather. They -- supposedly her grandfather
went with Golden to a place where North, South Carolina
and Georgia all come together, which is a Cherokee reservation. And Rose supposedly went and
saw him box, they fell in love, and Golden allowed Daisy's
grandfather to get married in the Cherokee tradition, whatever
that was, and then carried them back by cart to the Golden plantation. And so I thought, you know,
I went down to Cherokee. I was trying to figure out
how Daisy's grandfather, who he would've fought down there. There were not plantations there. And then I came across a court
case, and it told me that Rose, and it only refers to her as black, and yet the family Alec always
said she was full-blooded Cherokee, so I believe that, but
that Rose had been owned by this guy called Miku
[assumed spelling], who was moving to Mississippi. And she had a bad hip, and he
sold her to Jack Golden, who came and said I have her husband. And Rose at that point had
her first child, George, who was Alec's older
brother by 10 years. So there was documentation
of the sale in 1835. So what had happened was, two
stories I think had been collapsed. I think Rose came from where
North and South Carolina and Georgia all come together, but
how she was enslaved I don't know. And that is a good example of
mixing up over generations. Okay. >> Thank you very much. >> Jane Beck: Thank you [applause]. >> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.
