Journey's End: The Memories and Traditions of Daisy Turner and Her Family; Part 1

Daisy Turner was one of Vermont's most remarkable storytellers. She died in February 1988 at the age of 104. Fortunately, many Turner stories have been recorded and they bring to life a time in American history that most of us have only read about all of these young people. Now, they can't imagine that 100 years ago they had these Negro slave down here in the United States. They don't know nothing about it. And they I tell some of these things that they look at me that they think the girl she must be a little lonely. Well, I ain't lonely when there they was. They were beating them and working them. And they were slaves for sale in the United States, in Washington, D.C.. I remember Aunt Daisy as being a very articulate person. She was never at a loss for words. She had a memory similar to a computer. She could reach back and, quote dates, names, places, occasions over

and over again that still be the same. And Daisy was especially proud of her father and she idolized him. He taught her about mending fences and chopping wood, tending to the livestock, and she just loved being with him all the time. Her father told her all the things that happened to him when he was on the plantation, when the master could say that the different colored slaves and things could sing or do something. And they had they made them do things all the wood to cut the trees, bend it back and play it like a guitar. They didn't have the money and things to buy nothing. But when the master could see that they could some of them [inaudible] smart could do like that, then the master would buy them something, you know, an instrument and help them to get a banjo or a guitar. And then they'd sing for the [inaudible] master and things.

When they had parted [singing] You eyes what Make this darky weep. Why he Like the others, am not gay? What make the tear roll down his cheeks from early morn till close of day my story darkies you shall hear for in my memory fresh it dwell, it will call each one to shed a tear o'er the grave of my sweet [inaudible] You well [singing ends] See, we didn't just come from nothing and nowhere. We've got a background and the background be traced right down to the root. And that is it. [Host] Daisy Turner, who died in 1988 at the age of one oh four. Tomorrow

on Journey's End, African slave ships and a Cherokee princess. I'm Barbara Jordan. The Turner family traces its origin by word of mouth back to Africa early in the last century, says Daisy Turner, a ship came by somewhere just off the coast of Ghana. The ship was carrying a woman who was to become Daisy's great grandmother, this English bride and groom, while on their honeymoon to Africa on the ship of the bride's father. When this terrible storm came up and the ship went to pieces on the coast of Africa. It was a terrible disaster. And this happened right in the early eighteen hundreds.

I can remember my Aunt Daisy relating a story where an English ship was wrecked off the west coast of Africa and one of the people rescued was a bride who was on board. She later became the wife of the chieftain's son who rescued her and a boy who was born to them named Alexander. [Change of speaker] He grew up there with them and with her, and he got to be very clever and smart and learned English from her. In fact, he was too smart because he got interested in the slave ships that seemed to have come to that section about every three months. He was between 18 and 22 when he was getting different slaves to gather there for the slave

ship that he was selling and making deals with the United States slave ships. And they took him on the slave ship as a slave with them. It seemed to have been one of the worst trips that the slave owners had made. And theirs slaves died and women had children on the ship and in the hold different diseases cropped out and they had to all so many died that they had to bury them at sea until the captain didn't know what to do. [Jordan] After many hardships, the slave vessel landed in New Orleans. There, Alexander was bought by a Virginia plantation owner, but Alexander was different from the other slaves. He spoke English and, says Daisy Turner, he was hard to control. For this reason, Alexander did not end up in the fields with the other slaves.

[Change of speaker] They said that he was so arrogant and hard to handle that the overseer couldn't get on, so the heads of the overseers, and the master decided to put him in a different line of work. And he became a fighter for the master. And he went around doing fight, fist fighting and chicken fighting. And and so he did this fighting for the trophies and money for the master. [another speaker] And Daisy used to tell of my grandfather's father fighting for his owner all over the south. Prizefighting this was. And on one occasion, he met an Indian lady named Princess Silver Bells. [Daisy Turner] Grandfather was there fighting when he

met this Cherokee Indian girl. He fell in love at once, the princess Silver Bell, and she saw him. Well, then you'll see the master all Golden like their father. And so he'd done anything that he could to help him and to please him and make him happy. So he allowed princess Silver Bell to go back to the plantation. And then they were given a cabin right near the big house, the White House. She wasn't put down with the other and the white Mrs. took to her right away. And then she admired her beaded dress and [unclear]. And then they and so when she found that she could sew and mend and do everything, then they knew how valuable she would be because she could make those red coats for the white men to wear when they were horseback riding and all.

And she used to sew and mended everything for them. [Host] Princess Silver Bells was also called Rosabelle or Rose. In 1845, Rose and Alexander had a son, Alec, who became Daisy Turner's father. Tomorrow on Journey's End, the story of young Alec and his red moccasins. I'm Barbara Jordan. [Daisy Turner] He didn't know nothing else to talk about my father, exceptin' Virginia, the plantation, and what he knew about slavery and his father's and mother's talk down there. [Host] Down there was Virginia where Daisy Turner's father was born a slave, used to tell stories about his father, Daisy's grandfather, who traveled for the master all around the south as a boxer. When he accidentally killed his opponent in the ring. He vowed to fight no more.

Soon after, probably in eighteen forty-nine, Daisy's grandfather was killed, crushed by a falling barn rafter. His grandmother continued to work on the plantation as a seamstress, making fine clothes for the master's family. As Daisy Turner recalls, it was because of these clothes that five year old Alec, her father, gradually began to realize he was different from his white playmates. [Daisy Turner] The little boys, John and Frank, and George and the different ones always dressed different than he. And he couldn't understand why He always was barefooted. He never had any shoes, our little stockings with rings running round them, or little short pants on, or a little white blouses and colored blouses that had little ruffles at the neck and ruffles around the sleeve.

And all he wore was just this one little piece belted in and sometimes little pants underneath them and no shoes ever or anything. And he was just their size and all and they played together. And he began asking his mother why he didn't look like them and all. But he said she was constantly sewing and she never seemed to be able to make him happy Or explain why he didn't look like the little boys he played with. And so he said after a while she made him some little moccasins from little pieces of scrap. After she'd made the red coats and things, she made these little moccasins for him and put on little beads on the toe all and oh how he loved to put them on and strut around. But he noticed after awhile that every time the missus came down to the cabin or anyone was around, she would always

take them off his feet and hide them so that he couldn't have them on to show them off. And he wondered why she did that. And finally, when that little white girl was having this party and the mother and she kept coming back and forth trying on the dress, and the ruffles and things. One morning he had on these little moccasins. When she came down, the white lady, so that the lady, white lady discovered these red shoes on his feet. And what did she do but grab those little moccasins from his feet and throw them in the fire. And he said, what did she do that for? But that's what she did. And so he just made a rush for her and grabbed her and tore her dresses and skirts and ruffles off.

And finally she fell to the floor and he bit her legs and a bit her hand that [inaudible] a [inaudible]. And he says she fainted dead away. And of course he said he never forgot it as long as he lived. That awful, awful look in his mother's eyes. [Host]Daisy Turner and more stories of plantation life on tomorrow's Journey's End. I'm Barbara Jordan. In 1825, Daisy Turner's father, Alec, was born a slave on a Virginia plantation. As a child, Alec was put to work tending sheep, driving the cows to pasture and cleaning stables. His days on the plantation passed with their measure of hard work lightened from time to time by celebrations and homemade entertainment. The masters found these slaves to be good singers, instrumentalists, and dancers.

Daisy Turner remembers her father singing Nellie Gray, one of the songs popular among the slaves. [Daisy Turner singing] Oh, my poor Nellie Gray. They have taken you away and I'll never see my darling any more. They have taken her to Georgia, but to wear her life away while I toiled made the cotton and the cane and anything. One night I went to see her. She had gone the neighbors say that a white man came and he bound her up in chains while I toiled on. The old Kentucky [inaudible]. Oh my poor Nellie Gray. [singing ends] My father said such a terrible situation was existing that no one could imagine it at all. Like he told about the first little colored girl slave girl she was that he kind of liked. But he said some of the white men

started after her and she didn't know what to do, but she ran and jumped in the Rappahannock River and drowned. And he said that that was the year that he was fourteen. And he began realizing more and more that he must get away. And so this freedom. [Host] Alec Turner's stories burned these images into his daughter's brain and heart. [Daisy Turner] I'm a hundred and it's just a hundred and twenty years ago that they were putting me up on the block. How much am I? How much am I ever? But this woman, this nigger woman, that this slave woman [inaudible] just a hundred years ago, they could put me right up and do that, every dark skinned people. And at the same time they would have children by them black women and they got to where they were putting up their own children selling them like food. [Host] Daisy Turner. Tomorrow on Journey's End, you'll hear a fishing story. I'm Barbara Jordan.

Daisy Turner says her father, Alec, was born on the John Golden Plantation on the Rappahannock River in Port Royal, Virginia. Census records show that 77 slaves worked Golden's 2000 acres. [?Alec? Turner] The northern border of the Golden Plantation was on the Rappahannock River. And I can remember my grandfather talking about hauling seine, he mentioned a fish called sturgeon and it was full of seafood and because it was Tidewater, probably loaded with crabs and other seafood that would be peculiar to that particular area. [Host] Bruce Turner lived with his grandfather, Alec, from 1919 to 1923 and heard many stories about plantation life. [Bruce Turner] As a youngster

when my grandfather was 14, 15 years old, he used to haul sand along with other members of the plantation along the Rappahannock River. And while they were doing this, they would sing various songs: I've Been Listening All Night Long, John Saw the Number, which was rhythmic and reminds me of some of the songs that railroad workers would use when they were pounding the ties and beating on the spikes that put in railroad tracks. My grandfather used to say that if slaves didn't work fast enough, hard enough, early enough to satisfy the overseer, the result would be a beating. One of the ways that the overseers got the attention of the slaves was

to whip them with boards which had holes bored into them, and when applied to the skin, it would crack it. After this brine was swabbed on the area and this would sting more and the person would be uncomfortable for a number of days. That was how they kept them under control. [Daisy Turner] My father said when he was 12, they had offered to buy him from the master for twelve thousand dollars. They offered all gold and twelve thousand for my father as a breeder, for the slaves down in Virginia and all gold. And wouldn't sell him. He said he wouldn't sell him at any price so that his father said when they had told the overseers to kind of pacify my father not to [inaudible]. to whip him or beat him or touch him in any way because he was so valuable

[Host] Daisy and Bruce Turner, daughter and grandson of Alec Turner. Next on Journey's End, the bloodstained primer. I'm Barbara Jordan. Vermont storyteller Daisy Turner often spoke of a small book that had belonged to her father, Alec Turner. It was a primer, a beginner reader. It was a reminder of his plantation days as a slave. [Daisy Turner] That little primer had. Why everybody in town here had seen that little primer. My father brought it from the war and used to carry it. And I always kept it up on the hill and I used to show it. And I tell you, I used to show these things to verify the truth. [Host] The truth is the Turner family story of a parent's slavery. Daisy Turner recalls that one of the jobs her father had to do on the plantation was to take care of the cows.

[Daisy Turner] Father says he had got to be as He remembered maybe seven going on eight when he at that time was filling these jars or bottles at that time of milk for these different ones, the slaves and the poor white people that came to get the milk to the milk house. And so that is where the little missis had somehow obtained a little primer. I can't tell you the name. And I thought I would never forget the name of that Primer from the blood that was on it of my father. And so this little missis was teaching my father abcs and l [inaudible] p and things like that. [Change of reader] My grandfather's owner's granddaughter was slightly older than my grandfather, and she is the person who behind some building would teach him how to read and write his

alphabet. He did real well at this, very apt pupil. It was forbidden by all rules and regulations for slaves to read and write or to have any kind of education. So she did this at the risk of her welfare and his too. [Daisy Turner] She told father that up north in Vermont was a place where he could get up there, the white people would let him be free. But at any rate, all he was doing was filling these bottles when the mother came down behind the milk house because the little daughter somehow was making it obvious that she planned to be down at this milk house at certain times too. She came and she had this big bullwhip that they used to whip them with and when she found the little daughter was just teaching father and

father had the Primer. So she undertook to take the primer from father and send the little daughter to the house when Father held on and started the fight her to keep the little Primer in his own hand. And she struck him with the whip across the face and cut father's face. But the blood, he bled on the Primer. [Host] According to Daisy Turner, in 1862, at age 16, Alec decided to escape from the plantation and join the army. The first New Jersey cavalry was camped across the Rappahannock River just a few miles from the plantation. [Daisy Turner] When the thing finally broke. But father said at that time, no one figured that anything would last only a few months. So when the first shots were fired and the war started, no one, no one he said dreamed but that it would last and end up in just a few months. Instead of that, it run four long

years. One of the bloodiest wars ever had been fought in history with brother fighting brother, fathers, and sons, and family that war run. My father said the thing went on and on and the fight until he decided and he got together other of the slave boys, that was over 100 of them that got together. But finally they said that they all kind of backed down and part of the number would go down to the edge of the river and the water and make waves and put the sheets on sticks and things that way until the union soldiers came over and swam over to them in boats and things. And father said that's how he first got in touch with the first New Jersey Cavalry. [Host] Vermont storyteller Daisy Turner. Tomorrow on Journey's End, the raid. I'm Barbara Jordan.

[Daisy Turner] The masters had all the say and what the masters couldn't handle They had a overseer, white overseer and colored overseers that had charge of the business for them. One of them I told you was this Pusley that papa shot. [Host] According to Daisy Turner. Her father Alec joined the Union Army after he escaped from the Virginia plantation where he had been born a slave. The cruel overseer of the plantation was named Presley, which they pronounced Pusley. Alec ran away and met up with the first New Jersey cavalry, But two nights later, he went back. [Change of speaker] The second day after my grandfather ran away from the plantation, he was one of two slaves who acted as guides for a volunteer raiding force to go across the Rappahannock to the Golden Plantation and capture rebel pickets and vedettes.

They were successful in this raid, but on the an overseer named Presley was leaning out the window and asked who was that out there, and my grandfather called his own name and so that the man wouldn't recognize him again, he shot him. [Host] According to records, Presley was himself a slave who'd worked on the plantation for decades. So it's more than likely he was one of the overseers when Alec Turner shot him. [Daisy Turner] Father says they went back. Old Pusley was upstairs and he came to the window and wanted to know what they wanted. And he says that you? is that? who is who is there or something like that. And father says, this is me, this is Alec.

And said, I'm going to shoot you. And he said he shot him right through the stomach, like in his chest, and he was partway up on the ladder. The house wasn't too high. It's a two story, I think he said. But anyway, father shot him and he fell and when he fell he hollered for water, give him some cold water, cold water. But he died right there and his father said they started sassing him or something and he told them to remember something that he had done to him. I don't know what. So he said that was the first shooting that he'd done with that Pusley. I've heard him tell that many and many a time, many and many a time. [Change of speaker] I can remember my grandfather telling this story over and over again. And when he shot this overseer, it was a sort of retribution for some of

the trials and tribulations that he and others had gone through. [Host] Bruce Turner and his Aunt Daisy, tomorrow on Journey's End, the doctor's letter. I'm Barbara Jordan. Daisy Turner loved to recite poetry and knew several long Civil War poems. She especially liked one called "The Doctor's Letter" because a family nearby was supposed to have received just such a letter telling of the death of their 19 year old son. [Daisy turner] Dear madam, I am a soldier and my speech is rough and plain. I'm not much used to writing and I hate to give you pain, but I promised I would do it and he thought it might be so if it came from one that loved him, perhaps it would ease the blow. By this time.

You must surely guess the truth I feign would hide and you'll pardon me for rough soldier words while I tell you how he died. The night before the battle and in our crowded tent, more than one brave boy was sobbing and every knee was bent. For we knew not on the morrow when this bloody work was done, how many of us that were kneeling there would see the setting sun. Not so much for self we cared as for the love that home because it's always worse to think of than to hear the cannons boom. It was then We left the crowded tent, your soldier boy and I and we both we three are standing underneath the clear blue sky.

I was more than ten years older, but he seemed to take to me and more oftener than the younger ones he sought my company. He seemed to want to talk of home and those that he held dear while I had none to talk of, but I always liked to hear. And so he told me of the night and the time he came away and how you sorely grieved for him, but you didn't bid him stay. And how his own fond hope had been that when this war was through, he might go back with honor to his home, to his friends. And you. He named his sisters one by one. And then a deep flush came when he told me of another, but he didn't speak her name. And then he said, Dear doctor, it may be that I shall fall.

And if so, will you write to those at home how I love and spoke of all. So I promised, but I didn't think the time would come so soon. The fight was just three days ago. He died today at noon. It seemed so hard that one so loved as he was should be gone. While I should still be living here who have no friends at home. It was in the morrow's battle. Fast rained the shot and shell. I was standing close beside him and I saw him when he fell. And so I took him in my arms and laid him on. The grass. It ?was? going against orders, but I think they let it pass. It was a mini ball that struck him. It entered at his side, but we didn't think it fatal till this morning but he died. I wrapped his cloak around him as we bore him out tonight and laid him on

the clump of trees where the moon was shining bright. I have carved him up a headboard as skillful as I could, and if you wish to find it, I can tell you how it stood. I'll send you back his hymnbook and the cap he used to wear and the lock I cut the night before of his bright, curly hair. I will send you back his Bible. The night before he died I turned its leaves together and read it by his side. I'll keep the belt he was wearing, he told me so to do. It had a hole upon the side just where the ball went through. So now I've done his bidding. There is nothing more to tell, but I will always mourn with you. The boy we love so well. [Host] Vermont storyteller Daisy Turner at age 100, reciting the Civil War era poem.

"The Doctor's Letter". Tomorrow on Journey's End, a marriage and near disaster at sea. I'm Barbara Jordan. During the Civil War, Daisy Turner's father, Alec, worked as a doctor's orderly in the Union Army. After the war ended, The doctor got Alec Turner a job helping other freed slaves find work. [Daisy Turner] Then my father, kept carrying, going back and forth, getting all of these ex-slaves as fast as they come in refugees and things to Washington, they had just like a hog pen in there for them to stay till something could be done. Then as they could get them out. That's was good. Father was working fast and doing wonderful, finding places and things for these ex-slaves. Then another set would come in. [Host] One day in Washington, Alec Turner noticed a young girl standing with one of the ex-slave families.

Her name was Sally Early. She was the daughter of a slave, Rachel, and a Confederate general, Jubal Early. Alec took a particular interest in Sally. [Daisy Turner] Father says he fell in love with my mother at once. When he first saw her, she was only fourteen and she was crying. And so he went over and talked to her and made her feel better. So then they talked together quite a lot. I if you would want to marry me, I would marry you, don't you see? And then look out for you just as long as we live so you would never have to be taken away from me. [Host] After the wedding, the young bride and groom went to Boston, where they boarded a ship for Maine. They almost didn't survive the voyage. [Daisy Turner] When they got out in the ocean to a certain place between here where they said there was a whirlpool. This peculiar storm came up and the boat got bad

going like and when they got to this particular place, the boat struck a leak. And father told, Oh, I've heard him tell it so many times. [inaudible] told me that how the water came in, they put in the mattresses and they pumped the water. They'd done everything that could humanly be possible until they thought had no hope. The boat was going to sink. And father said he prayed as much as he could and took Mama like in his arms. But he said this woman, papa said she could pass for white and she was kind of short and she had blue eyes. But Father said she came out from where they were on the deck and rushed out in open on the deck and she raised her hands she raised both of her hands.

And father said she started praying to Jesus Christ that was born in the manger, the Virgin Mary, and died on the cross of Calvary and who had walked upon the sea, And her name was Liza. And Father said almost instantly the wind and that boat stopped rocking readily, easily, and the water stopped coming in, the calm came and the water stopped coming in the boat and they put her on the boat and they said pray, Liza, Pray, Liza, pray on, Liza. And Papa said that woman prayed he don't know for how long, but he said everything calmed, the boat stopped, then [inaudible] made that [inaudible] made the play. [Host] Daisy Turner, daughter of Sally and Alec Turner. Tomorrow on Journey's End, The Slate Quarry.

I'm Barbara Jordan. Shortly after the Civil War, General O. O. Howard of the Freedmen's Bureau arranged to send a colony of freed slaves near Bangor, Maine, to work in the Merrill Slate Quarry. With them, says Bruce Turner, was his grandfather, Alec. [Bruce Turner] My grandfather worked for Merrill in Williamsburg, Maine, in his slate quarry. He had brought a number of former slaves and relatives to Williamsburg to be with him while he was working in the quarry. During the evenings, he would teach these former slaves how to read and write and figure. They earned as much as 50 cents a day.

When these workers went down into the quarry, they could be seen wearing a pencil behind their ear, which was an indication that this was a tool that they could also use in addition to the drills and the hammers which were used in the quarry. [Host] Alex's daughter Daisy Turner remembers the ballads and hymns sung by her father and friends. [Daisy Turner] One of the songs they used to sing was Hail brother [inaudible] hail and then my father would sing Hail everyone hail, hail everyone, hail, if you would walk the heavenly road, sing of Jordan Stream, it's a beautiful stream. It's the very last river you'll cross, but it takes a valiant soldier to walk the heavenly road. [Host] The freed

slaves held prayer meetings where they joined hands and circled around the room singing. [Daisy Turner singing] John saw All the numbers John saw the number, John saw the golden number, the holy number sitting in the golden altar. So come along, Moses, and don't get lost sitting in the golden altar. But strut your rod and come along cross sitting in the golden altar. Well, John saw the number. [inaudible] John saw the number. John saw the holy number sitting in the golden altar. If religion was a thing that money could buy, sitting in the golden altar. The rich would live and the poor would die, sitting in the golden altar. But I thank my God that it isn't so, sitting in the golden altar, for the poor have hope on Canaan's shore, sitting in the golden

altar. Well, John saw the number, John saw the number, John saw the holy number, sitting in the golden altar. [Daisy Turner speaking] That was John in the Bible. He saw the number that was written on the stones of how they were to get the religion. [Host] Winters at the quarry in Maine were harsh. The work and social conditions unfamiliar. By 1880, all families of freed slaves had moved away. This moment in the history of Williamsburg, Maine, lived on in the songs remembered by Daisy Turner. [Daisy Turner singing] Down by a drooping Willow where the violets early bloom. There lies a sweet young Ellen so silent in her tomb. She died not broken hearted or

sickness her did fell, but by one sad, sad parting from the one she loved so well. One night when the moon was shining as it oft had shown before into her cottage lightly her jealous lover stole saying "love, Come let us wander down--" [Host] Next on Journey's End, coming to Vermont. I'm Barbara Jordan.