Journey's End: The Memories and Traditions of Daisy Turner and Her Family; Part 2

According to Daisy Turner, life was hard in the town of Grafton, Vermont, back in 1873 to sawmill owners Charles White and just Wilbur were out of workers and out of money. So he went to Boston for a loan but had no luck. Heartbroken, Wilbur and White went back to the train station to return home. So they were get ready had come down from Boston down to the north station to take the train, to come back up the fall. And they saw my father and was still there wiping his eyes like this because they had told him that my mother couldn't live till the day and Child White was wiping his eyes with tears because they know they couldn't. I couldn't borrow the money. They were coming back home and the town of Grafton was lost. It was a fruitful coincidence. Grafton Township needed strong workers and ElectraNet needed a healthy environment for his young wife, Sally.

He was in Boston looking for a doctor, but father saw this man cry, wiping his eyes. This white man, he felt sad. And then they saw people wiping his eyes and they felt sad till they were sad. So then they went over and asked my father if he knew of any more of the slave boys strong like him that would like to come up in the country and work. They told my father what a healthy place Grafton was and that my father said that what started the word that rang the bell was the name that like that. And he said, what a healthy place to work. So then father said, why did you take that to health at first? And so then they told them it was cold and snowy and their father told them that his wife was dying with old fashioned consumption and they hadn't given him only the day to think. So they said, you don't mean it. So they said, we'll pray. That's what I know, there's power. And a father said they prayed right there in the north

station. And he had been so faithful and believed in my father that he said that this warm wave that come over him there and he knew. And so he said that the he said to them, I won't go now because he couldn't go get off. I'm at work and everything. But he said, you'll come back tomorrow morning and I'll go with you. And my boss from Maine will be with me. I can get him and we will go to the bank. And I feel they will let you have the money. According to Daisy, Turner's boss did get them the money. And Turner returned with Wilbur and White to their Vermont sawmill. His wife recovered from her tuberculosis. And Daisy Turner was born in Grafton, Vermont. Ten years later, in 1883 by Daisy's birth, her father had acquired one hundred acres of land to farm.

This was to be his home for fifty years now. They called his farm journeys. And tomorrow I turn to the strong man. I'm Barbara Jordan. My grandfather was a big man, six foot three to 35 when he came to Grafton. He had blacksmiths make him a five pound ax with this ax. He could cut twice as much wood as the ordinary Vermonter could with his three and a half pound ax. He made twice as much money as any other individual. Consequently, he lived well, made enough money to take care of his family and to buy land. According to Bruce Turner, his grandfather. Alec arrived in Grafton, Vermont, in 1872.

Many people in town had never seen a colored man before, a person named Culver, who was a little boy when my grandfather first came to Grafton. They had never seen a Negro before and couldn't understand why they looked the ways that they did. He and other children followed my grandfather around the village and asked my grandfather to roll his sleeves up to see if he was the same color. All over, our Turner became known as the strongest man in town. His daughter, Vermont storyteller Daisy Turner, remembered that her father used to walk the four miles from home to market, carrying a large pile of eggs in each hand and a third balanced on his head. One day, his strength earned him an entire barrel of flour, the woman said.

If you could carry a bag about about our home and I'd give it to you. Father, said your. I would take it up when I go so far to find it got wet and it got started. So he put the ball of flour and he told me how many times just how to do it just right on top of each other and started and my father it to his name, Alexander, my father, I, I'm proud to be your daughter when all of that road and up that hill and across that long field because we lived in the city and my father never set that ball down until he got up in the twenty dollar. And that must have been at that time. All the men all following him with with little girls are very young and hard cider and all. And mother told many a time how after they all got they all got drunk

and they all were saluting him and congratulated on him. And my father carried that barrel of flour from grass and village up on our hilltop as children to eat, to have bed. Now that's the truth if I never speak a word again. Daisy Tourneau with memories of her father ElectraNet. Tomorrow on Journey's End, how Daisy's sister shot the ball and saved her mother. I'm Barbara Jordan. Daisy Turner, who died in 1988 at the age of 104, was a native of Grafton, Vermont. She had 12 sisters and brothers and a childhood illness as a little girl on Tastee had rickets, and it lasted for quite a while.

But her father and mother worked on her and eventually she came out of it. All right. I think it was about age five that she began to walk at a young age. Daisy heard prayers, recitations, hymns and songs which she learned and which became an important part of her life. And since she couldn't walk, Daisy Turner channeled her energy in other ways. One of them poetry men have done great. And by the some of them well, that I have a young girl's courage. Now, Taylorsville and I have to be always making a point and things like that, you know, because I couldn't walk and travel like the rest of them. So I'd be sitting down with the slate, making up things that people would give me a box of matches with take and I just lay them all down like that to do so.

And Daisy used to like poems and one of them that she made up was about Lawrences Hill when my mother Viall, that her name's Violet, grew up on Lawrences Hill picking blueberries. Unbeknownst to them, there was a bull walking around the field and I was going to attack my grandmother only a few feet away. And luckily my mother had her rifle and just a few feet before the bull charged her mother, she shot the bull and saved her mother from being gored and said that and Violet heard Mama calling the cubs mama was running. And that it, as I said, that she grabbed she grabbed the rifle from the ground. No one will shelver at all.

And that the mad pursuing bull, she sent the only ball from her lips. There was no murmur. But from her half that went up when she opened her eyes and the sunshine, she knew that God was there. Just three feet from her mother's lifeless arm was a bull. That shot of the bull had just about just about three feet. They measured it. If he had if the ball hadn't struck him, he would have put it right in the gun. Mother in a minute, storyteller Daisy Turner at age 100. Tomorrow on Journey's End, Daisy's black doll. I'm Barbara Jordan. Every year at the end of school, like June round, they had

two days where all of the fathers and mothers attended recitations and readings and drawings and things and exhibits. But the show the parents what the children were doing. Even as a little girl in the 80s in Grafton, Vermont, Daisy Turner could make up rhymes and verses. This caused a special stir on one last day of school on this last day of school. It got to be, I guess, about almost the last week when the teacher, for some unknown reason, decided to put on this dialog showing all of the different countries and the nationalities and costumes, trying to get this first prize. So the teacher wanted me to take Africa a black doll dinner and to say the poem that they had written for me to say, and I didn't want to do it, but after I went home and told my father the story,

then my father told me it meant no harm. And he explained how the different men built different houses, shapes and painted them different colors. And it was just a matter of decided, if you like the picture, the loveliest in your own eyes and pleased you. And so if I was a little darker skinned girl and cut the dark colored doll, I would just as lovely as the other than the difference. So after. All right, I agreed until the day of this occasion, it was lovely. And every farm award best overhauled and clean white shirt and the ladies all dressed up in their one dress, the black alpaca fluid in the house, fixing everything. Amy Davis was the first one to come out and she held her doll, very lovely in her arms and said, My doll came from Sunny France. Her name is Antoinette.

She's two years old on Christmas Day and a very Dallin pet. So she went on rambling about her doll and Andinet. Then she went and sent a set and a net out front on the seat and went back and turned her skirt and picked to have to sit behind like the mother. So that's the way they went through that whole performance. And finally it got down to me with this black doll. So I said, I'm not going to do it. And of course, the teacher and I was back behind and she was saying, oh, and I was pulling no, I wouldn't go. And she kept urging me. She said she let me wear watch and that she'd give me paper money and all. So I finally consented. But I was so angry. My voice was high and I said, You needn't crowd my dolly out all those years blood money.

And if she is that they I think she'll stand a good chance that Dolly then I wipe. My daddy says that half the world really dark is night and it had no harm to take a chance and to stay right in the fight. So stand up. So set up Dolly and look straight to the judges that the right I was and I'll stand right by your side if I do look right. And so I went on, say it might be through. But instead of saying the peace that the teacher had taught me to say, I was say what I wanted to say on my own. And so I said so I said, the teacher face is all I can see it rather than a beat, and that it come down from the back and it led her see it and gave to me that famous ten o'clock. So I sat down and shut my mouth up tight just like a book. Nobody said a word for me.

They didn't know what to make of it. They were all amazed. They didn't know whether they ought to applaud or whether it was good or bad, but it kind of broke up the thing. But when they got through with it, in the end, they gave me the first prize, the ten dollar gold piece storyteller Daisy Turner. Tomorrow on Journey's End, Daisy Turner goes to market. I'm Barbara Jordan. In the late 1980s, Adriana's father began shipping his poultry to Barry's market in Boston. He marked his chickens and turkeys by clipping their Hindoos. It was prized. DOCSIS, Daisy Turnham and all went well until one day when a check arrived from Boston short by several hundred dollars. That was a note, a note saying, we're officially Elich.

We wasn't able to give you as much as we ought to have, much as usual, or as much as you ought to deserve on this allotment of good. But they added go to Gildroy this year and we've had to duck you own them. And when father took out the check and looked, he just put his hand to his face like that and the tears run right down his face like that. Daisy Turner took matters into her own hands. She dressed up in her finest, borrowed a mother's best pocketbook and got on the train to Boston to find merchant Barry. I went right down to the village market, so I said, I'd like to see Mr. Ballard. I want to see him because they have said that my father took his and things had spoiled. And I came back. I came down. But to get the rest of our money men was all gathered from the market district up until maybe 18 or 20 of

them and got around on the edge of this market where they were hanging up and watching to see this little girl was going to do so. Finally, he came and when he saw me, his face got just as red as blood. And then it got yes, there's white and all just like, you know. And he staggered. I said, you said that on this ladder that my father took, said the things had spoiled. And I said it's all help to pick them. And I said they all were packed in this nice paper that my father had got from you all. And we never had done this before. And I said, I'll do the best in the market. And I said, though, that all turkeys and those hours and hours and hours and they did chickens and that this is ours and this box, I said, those are the packages. They shot them.

And I said, my brother chopped these and all of this. And I begin to tell them what our stuff was and thank goodness. And I said, my sister told me not to come back to show my face without all of the money of my daddy's money in full so we could have our coat and the rubber boots and feel that we've got the have food and they all the good they all looked like they were kind of sick. Then the next thing we knew I never remembered Mr. Barrett, stuff like that with his hand up at the state. And they let him out from where I was sitting in back in there. Well, I'd heard two or three oh oh oh and I couldn't see what the fun could be. But at any rate, they haven't been gone out too long. The next thing I know, they came in with bags of candy sticking out of the top of the bags and cookies and things. They had great bags of orange in a box basket of food from my mother and all, and in another a bottle

of whiskey. And then they put those envelopes in my pocket. Well, and by that time it had got to be around eight and nine o'clock. And so the men said we'd better get a ride back down to the station. So when the train came in at Delafield, there was Violet and the girl again. So they said they'd go get our father's money. And I said, I guess so. I don't know, but held the bag and everything was in it till we had a time by then. Delafield Beaumont storyteller Daisy Turner. Next on Journey's End, Daisy's premonition. I'm Barbara Jordan. Daisy Turner used to say that she and her father alike were so close that they could communicate with each other psychically and at one time that saved a life.

In the 1920s, Daisy Turner was working in Boston for a Mrs. Sherman Raymond, organizer of Ladies Orchestras. One day Daisy arrived at work and was hanging up her coat when suddenly there appeared before an apparition of her father, Alec Turner. At first it was just a very faint gray light came into the room and then it grows stronger and stronger. And finally, right out of this, Mr. Gray, my father's farm appeared and it seemed like he he spoke to me and he says, Gal, we need you. And this awful, awful, peculiar feeling went from my head right down to my toes, all down my spine. And my father figure right before me, Daisy Turner put her coat right back on and took the next train home to Vermont.

That was too much snow for a sleigh. Daisy had to walk the final distance from the station to the farm. It must have been at least almost thirty five to forty below. So I struggled through that snow suddenly three miles and a half before the shot cut through the woods, which brought me in the back of our house that filled the back yard and back of the house. I could hear the dog howling and as soon as I got into the house, my father said, Thank God, thank God that you have come. And I said, What's wrong, Dad? And he says, It's your mother. And she's been gone since morning. Daisy's father, Alec, had been crippled in a farm accident. He couldn't get up to see what had become of his wife after she went outside and

didn't come back from a cold night. And she thought she would go across to the barn. And she said, well, we had at that time, I guess, five or six hundred him. And so she would go across to pick up the eggs before they freeze. But at any rate, my mother had lost her way and couldn't find her way and have got too cold and slowly freezing to death. And she had called, but no one could hear her. So she was just doomed. And there she was and she had kept playing and calling. And that's what has kept the dog barking and whining. And my father so uneasy and happy and not knowing what to do. But at any rate, I just drop everything and undone the dog and tied him and let him loose. And I could see faint footsteps, but no sound.

But Bell kept going and finally crossed the brook. And after she got to the block, Mother had crawled up beside one of the old black stumps, and she had rolled quite a way, but she was just about gone. But she was able to see him. She says, Oh my God, my God. And I just grabbed her in my arms and she left Colford Oh, nothing but ice and snow. And she had been out there since certainly since eight o'clock that morning in that awful cold. Well, that dog grabbed hold of her skirt to me and help me. And together we dragged my mother. We worked like that. Maybe it took me three quarters of an hour to get her crossed and now stepped in over the little brook and then down the road to the house. But when we got her clothes on the kitchen floor, we just grabbed her, hold everything right off of her, got

some, blended down her now with the tea spoon, and father just kept praying. That is why I know that that is such power in fire, that power in prayer. Father prayed and I prayed and worked like sixty. So it got mother role and these warm blankets right on the kitchen floor and kept her giving her warm brandy with a teaspoon. So that's the way it worked out, that we saved our mother's life and I never could have saved. If it hadn't been for my father speaking to me and Mrs. Sherman Raymond Studio at Ninety Four Avenue storyteller Daisy Turne, tomorrow on Journey's End, a New Year's recitation. I'm Barbara Jordan. Around the turn of the century, the Turner household in Grafton, Vermont,

became a kind of community social center where local farmers and their families came to join in the dances and holiday celebrations. And we used to have square dances in the 16 by 16 foot maple floored kitchen. My uncles used to play. I used to join them when there were Christmas parties. People used to drop in. They had a fellow who was hired from the village or the next village, and that Daisy would do most of the calling calls, such as Lady Lady right around the corner, and they'd all salute the partners, first of all, to salute their fathers and then swing your partners and turn the same. The highlight of the evening would sometimes be a poetry recitation. An old New Year's poem Daisy Turner used to recite is the melodramatic

tale of a young woman who'd had a baby and was deserted by her lover. And this is New Year's Eve. Mother, mother. Can it be. And what a sad, sad change mother this year has wrought. In the last year, there was no Melea heart than mine. There was no brighter eye. There was no light a step than mine. Now, Mother Perama, a theme for every idol just sunk. Lower them the slave with a blighted name and a broken heart and very near my grave. So I feel that my day. No, Meyssan is running fast and the thought is strong within me that this day is my last of a group of lad and lasses. Methinks I catch a glimpse. My old companions will be there, just I am to the dance

and they will spend the night away in noisy mirth and glee while the shelter of a prison cell alone remains for me. I remember last year's sleigh ride mother over the frozen snow and how we danced to daylight. The sky was all aglow. I was the lightest hearted one of all that merry song, and he was by my side mother whom I had loved so long. I know you often warned me, mother, and told me of a truth. How Village Maids were seldom wed by high and lofty youth. But I thought me of the tale that red and of the songs I'd sung, how lofty Lord West Village made and beautiful and young. So I prize too much my beauty, which is had been my dream and scorn, the poor and honest ones that offered me their name. And now they will not speak to me.

I am a thing so vile. They passed me with a meaning look with a mocking smile. It is very hard. And yet I think I know if they had blown what they, if they had borne what I have borne, I wouldn't treat them so well. I am bowed in deep disgrace by one. I love beguile. He has left me and my shame alone and he will not own his child. But even now I do not think at heart of him as you. I do not think it had of him as many others do. I know he done me better wrong and bowed my head in shame. And yet it wasn't all his fault. I might have been to blame. And the time will come when he will feel his need to be forgiven. And you'll forgive him then. Dear Mother, when I have gone to heaven, poor baby. She has her father's face.

He's bright and laughing. I had she a right to bear his name. How happy I could die. But if she like me mother a bit wayward a bit. While though it is a bitter legacy to leave the guileless child. Tell her all of my story, though she thinks of me with hate. Better to scorn her mother's name than to share her mother's fate. But do not weep for me, mother, when I have left you here within a peaceful dwelling house the My New Year. Daisy Turne remembering a New Year's recitation from childhood tomorrow on Journey's End Daisies near marriage. I'm Barbara Jordan. In the 1920s, Daisy Turner worked in Boston and sent her income back to Vermont to help her family at the age of 40.

She became engaged to Joseph Boney. He was an automobile dealer and sold the moon automobile. It was understood as far as she was concerned, that they were to be married. It never came to pass because he had eyes for someone else. As a result of this, she's put a suit on him for breach of promise, alienation of affection and hot bomb. Mr. Barney was a little short stout man, very nice. And he seemed very fond of Aunt Daisy. Mr. Barney was white and had been a sort of a interracial case. It was very unusual at that time that they

took it to court. When the verdict was announced, her first words were, I am vindicated. The Boston papers carried a photograph of Daisy Turner decked out in a hat of the latest fashion with the caption Miss Daisy. Jay Turner of Lexington, Massachusetts, was awarded three thousand seven hundred fifty dollars from Joseph, the Bonny automobile dealer, whom she also charged with breach of promise and alleged false larceny. Tomorrow on Journey's End, Alec Turner's funeral. I'm Barbara Jordan. And so our life run very easy, like a book, just like a book running. I would never know this hominine if anyone was going to go anywhere. Everybody would be interested to have that one go. And if they didn't have enough money, a dollar and a half, everybody would get five

to 10 percent of their money and go and pick it up at the bank. Let them have it. I loaned it to them. And if you had any food or anything special, we always shared with each other. Daisy Turner says that form was called Journey's End because her father never wanted to go any farther after he got to that hilltop in Grafton, Vermont. I, like Turner and his family, cultivated 100 acres and planted fruit trees, corn, potatoes, beans and hay. He had two working oxen and two milk cows. Journey's End was Turner's home for half a century. Albert Turner, born a slave in Virginia in the 18 40s, died in Grafton, Vermont, in December 1923. I can remember hearing my grandfather say that he didn't think too much of these automobiles and flying machines.

He always said that when he died, he didn't want to go to the cemetery and the hearse that was not drawn by horse. Consequently, when he died in December 2003, he was carried to the cemetery in a hearse drawn by a horse. He also used to say that when he was in his grave, he didn't want anyone to come to the cemetery and put flowers on his grave. And if they did, he was going to make smoke come up out of the ground. All the people that didn't know him ever know him, liked him, loved them, and they all know that he was unusual and that he was smart. But I think he got a part of his strength and smartness from God, from spiritual life, because he was spiritual and he fell on his knees and he talked with God,

he talked with Jesus. And they used to think they love him. And I told you, oh, a little talk with Jesus, how small the rugged road and how it helped me on both when I faint beneath the load, when my heart is crushed. And so when my eyes would tear the deal that did not give me comfort but a little talk with him. Oh, a little talk with Jesus makes it right. All right. A little talk with Jesus. Make it right. All right. And trials of every kind. Thank God. I always find if I have a little talk with Jesus, then it's right. All right. And he used to sing that piece and go to his knees, and I knew he got spiritual strength from that great storyteller.

Daisy turnout tomorrow, journey's end. I'm Barbara Jordan. For most of her 104 years, Daisy Turner lived in the house built by her father, Alec, attorneys in their farm in Grafton, Vermont, in 1962, when Daisy was almost 80 years old, Journey's end burned and with it was burned a household of history. We just lost everything, everything like in that house when I died. I died twice in life the day my father died and the day that house burned down, that beautiful, that beautiful, beautiful turn out went down the magic that something never to be forgotten. Gone in the blaze was the blood stained premiere carried by Alec Turner throughout the Civil War gone to war. The old photographs of Daisy Turner's grandparents, the slave woman, Rachel,

the Confederate General Jubal Early. The things were gone, but not the memories. Daisy Turner lived another 26 years reciting poems, singing songs and telling about family history. She was proud of her heritage and understood the value of her family tradition. We didn't just come from nothing and nowhere. We've got a background and the background we traced right down to the route. When I was little, we used to go over to her house all the time. She used to tell a lot of tales and songs and poems and everything, and she tried to help everybody all the time and just incredible memory. And Daisy passed away in February of nineteen eighty eight. Daisy Turner died at the age of 104. On our last birthday, she recited from memory without hesitation a poem that went on for 17

minutes. We can still hear her voice because six years ago, Daisy Turner began recording her life story for the Vermont Folk Life Center. How beautiful. My father died. And that is why that was one of his favorite piece, My Savior. First of all, he used to love to sing death and my life's work attended. And I crossed the swelling tide and that bright and glorious morning, I should say. I know my redeemer. And I passed the other side and his smile will be the first to welcome me. Vermont storyteller, poet and family historian Daisy Turner. I'm Barbara Jordan and this is Journey's End.