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

[Barbara Jordan, host] According to Daisy Turner, life was hard in the town of Grafton, Vermont, back in 1873. Two sawmill owners, Charles White and Vestus Wilbur were out of workers and out of money. So they went to Boston for a loan but had no luck. Heartbroken, Wilbur and White went back to the train station to return home. [Daisy Turner] So they were gettin' ready had come down from Boston down to the North Station to take the train, to come back up to [inaudible] Falls. And they saw my father. And Papa was still there wiping his eyes like this, because they had told him that my mother couldn't live through the day and Charles White was wiping his eyes with tears because he knew they couldn't borrow the money. They was coming back home and the town of Grafton was lost. [Jordan] It was a fruitful coincidence. Grafton Township needed strong workers, and Alec Turner needed a healthy environment for his young wife, Sally.

He was in Boston looking for a doctor. [Daisy Turner] But father saw this man crying, wiping his eyes. this white man; he felt sad. And then they saw Papa wiping his eyes and they felt sad, too, they were sad. So then they went over and asked my father if he knew of any more of the ex-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's what [inaudible], that rung a bell when he named it like that, And he said, what a healthy place Grafton was. So then father said, "Why did you say it's such a healthy place?" And so then they told them it was cold and snowy and all, then 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 in prayer. And 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 just come over him there and he knew. And so he said to them, "I won't go now," because he couldn't go get off from his work and everything. But he says, "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." [Jordan] 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. They called his farm Journey's End. Tomorrow, Alec Turner, the strong man. I'm Barbara Jordan. [Bruce Turner] My grandfather was a big man, six-foot-three, 235, when he came to Grafton. He had blacksmiths make him a five-pound axe. With this axe, he could cut twice as much wood as the ordinary Vermonter could with his three-and-a-half-pound axe. 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. [Jordan] According to Bruce Turner, his grandfather, Alec, arrived in Grafton, Vermont, in 1872.

Many people in town had never seen a colored man before. [Bruce Turner] 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. [Jordan] Alec 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 pail of eggs in each hand, and a third balanced on his head. One day, his strength earned him an entire barrel of flour. [Daisy Turner] ?Bill Wyman? said,

"If you could carry a barrel of that flour home, Alec, I'd give it to you." Well, Father said, "Your loss, because I'll take it up when I go." So Father finally got ready and he got started. So he put the barrel of flour and he told me many a time just how to do it just right on [inaudible] of his shoulder and started, and my father, glory to his name, Alexander, my father, I'm proud to be your daughter, went all 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 that must have been at that time, forty men all following him with little jugs of Jimmy-John and hard cider and all. And mother told many a time how after they all got drunk and they all were saluting him and congratulating 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. [Jordan] Daisy Turner with memories of her father, Alec Turner. Tomorrow on "Journey's End," how Daisy's sister shot the bull 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. [Male speaker] As a little girl, Aunt Daisy 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. [Jordan] 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. [Daisy Turner] "Men have done brave deeds. And bards have sung them well, but I of a young girl's courage now tale will tell." And I used to be always making up poems 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. Then Papa would give me a box of matches and arithmetic and I used to lay them all down like that, two, two, four. And Daisy used to like poems and one of them that she made

up was about Lawrence's Hill when my mother Violet, her name's Violet, grew up on Lawrence's Hill picking blueberries. Unbeknowing to them, there was a bull walking around the field and 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. [Daisy Turner] And said that when Violet heard Mama calling to come, Mama was running. And I said that she grabbed the rifle from the ground. Knowing one shell was all. And at the mad pursuing bull, she sent the only ball. From her lips

there rose no murmur, but from her heart there went a prayer. And when she opened her eyes in the sunshine, she knew that God was there. Just three feet from her mother's lifeless arm was the 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 grandmother in a minute. [Jordan] Storyteller Daisy Turner at age 100. Tomorrow on "Journey's End," Daisy's black doll. I'm Barbara Jordan. [Daisy Turner] Every year at the end of school, like June around, they had two days where all of the fathers and mothers attended recitations and readings and drawings and things and exhibits

for to show the parents what the children were doing. [Jordan] Even as a little girl in the 1880s in Grafton, Vermont, Daisy Turner could make up rhymes and verses. This caused a special stir on one last day of school. [Daisy Turner] 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 dialogue showing all of the different countries and the nationalities and costumes, for to get this first prize. So the teacher wanted me to take Africa, a black doll, Dinah, 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 was 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 deciding, which you liked, and which was the loveliest in your own eyes and pleased you. And so if I was a little darker skinned girl and took the dark colored doll, I was just as lovely as the others then what was the difference. So that was all right. I agreed. Until the day of this occasion, it was lovely. And every farmer wore his best overalls and clean white shirt and the ladies all dressed up in their one dress, the black alapacker or dark blue and their hair fixed and everything. Amy Davis was the first one that come out, and she held her dolly, very lovely in her arms and said, "My dolly came from sunny France. Her name is Antoinette. She's two years old on Christmas Day and a very darling pet." So she went on rambling about her doll and Antoinette.

Then she went and set Antoinette out front on the seat and went back and turned her skirt and fixed her hair ribbons to set 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'd let me wear her 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 although she's black as night. And if she is at the [inaudible], I think she'll stand as good a chance as the dollies that are white. My daddy says that half the world is nearly

dark as night, and it does no harm to take a chance and to stay right in the fight. So stand up, dolly. So set up, dolly, and look straight to the judges at the right while I was -- and I'll stand right by your side if I do look afright." And so I went on, saying my piece through. But instead of saying the piece that the teacher had taught me to say, I was saying what I wanted to say on my own. And so I said [laughter] so I said, "The teacher's face, as all can see, is redder than a beet, and Daddy's come down from the back and has led her to her seat. [laughter] And gave to me that famous Turner look. So I'll sit down and shut my mouth up tight just like a book." Well, nobody said a word to me. They didn't know what to make of it. They was 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. [Jordan] Storyteller Daisy Turner. Tomorrow on "Journey's End," Daisy Turner goes to market. I'm Barbara Jordan. In the late 1800s, Daisy Turner's father began shipping his poultry to Barry's Market in Boston. He marked his chickens and turkeys by clipping their hind toes. It was prized stock, says Daisy Turner, and all went well until one day when a check arrived from Boston short by several hundred dollars. There was a note. [Daisy Turner] The note said, "We're awful sorry, Alec, we wasn't able to give you as much as we ought to, or as much as usual, or as much as you ought to deserve on this allotment of goods.

But they aren't as good as usual this year, and we've had to dock you on 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. [Jordan] Daisy Turner took matters into her own hands. She dressed up in her finest, borrowed her mother's best pocketbook, and got on the train to Boston to find merchant Barry. [Daisy Turner] I went right down to the Barry's Market, so I said, "I'd like to see Mr. Barry. I want to see him, because they have said that my father's turkeys and things had spoiled. And I came back, I came down for 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 was hanging up and watching to see what 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 just as white and all just like snow. And he staggered. I said, "You said that on this letter that my father's turkeys and things had spoiled," and I said, "Mrs. ?Sole? helped 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 says, "Ours is the best in the market." And I said, "Those is our turkeys, and those is ours and those is ours, and these is our chickens, and this is ours, and this box," I said, "those are the packages. Uncle ?Early? shot them." And I said, "My brother shot these," and all of this, and I begin to tell him what our stuff was and hanging in. And I says, "My sisters 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 coats and the rubber boots and shoes that we've got to have for school," and they all begin -- they all looked like they were kind of sick. Then the next thing we knew, I [inaudible] remembered, Mr. Barry stopped like that with his hand up at his face. And they led him out from where I was sitting in back in there. Well, I'd heard two or three of them laughing, "Hoho hoho ho, ho ho ho," and I couldn't see what the fun could be. But at any rate, they hadn'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 oranges and a box basket of food for my mother and all, and in another a bottle of [inaudible], of whiskey. And then they put those envelopes in my pocket.

Well, 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 ?Bella's Ford?, there was Violet and the girl again. So they said, "Did you get our father's money." And I says, "I guess so, I don't know, but here's the bag," and everything was in it, so we had a time right then. [inaudible] [Jordan] Vermont 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 Alec 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 her an apparition of her father, Alec Turner. [Daisy Turner] At first it was just a very faint gray light came into the room and then it grew stronger and stronger. And finally, right out of this mist of gray, my father's form appeared and it seemed like he spoke to me and he says, "Girl, 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. [Jordan] Daisy Turner put her coat right back on and took the next train home to Vermont. There was too much snow for a sleigh.

Daisy had to walk the final distance from the station to the farm. [Daisy Turner] It must have been at least almost 35 to 40 below. So I struggled through that snow, certainly three miles and a half, maybe four, the shortcut, through the woods, which brought me in the back of our house [inaudible] 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. She's been gone since morning." [Jordan] 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. [Daisy Turner] It was a cold night

and she thought she would go across to the barn. And she, well, we had at that time, I guess, five or six hundred hen. And so she would go across to pick up the eggs before they'd freeze. But at any rate, my mother had lost her way and couldn't find her way and had got too cold and was 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 praying and calling. And that's what had kept the dog barking and whining and my father so uneasy and [inaudible] and not knowing what to do. But at any rate, I just dropped everything and undone the dog, untied 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 brook, 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 [inaudible] She says, "My God, my God." And I just grabbed her in my arms and she was [inaudible] all nothing but ice and snow. And she had been out there since certainly since eight o'clock that morning in that awful cold. Well, the dog grabbed hold of her skirt to me and helped me, and together we dragged my mother. We worked like that. Maybe it took me three quarters of an hour to get her across and now stepping over the little brook and then down the road to the house. But when we got her clothes [inaudible] the kitchen floor, we just grabbed her, pulled, tore everything right off of her, got some brandy down her mouth with a teaspoon, and

Father just kept praying. That is why I know that there is such power in prayer, there's power in prayer. Father prayed and I prayed and worked like sixty. So I got Mother rolled in these warm blankets right on the kitchen floor and kept 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 her if it hadn't been for my father speaking to me in Mrs. Sherman Raymond's studio at 94 Huntington Avenue. [Jordan] Storyteller Daisy Turner. 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. [Male speaker] 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 and people used to drop in, they had a fiddler who was hired from the village or the next village, and then Daisy would do most of the calling, calls, such as, "Ladies on the right, gentlemen on the left" [simultaneous audio: Daisy Turner] Lady on the right, and the left gentlemen on the left] corners on [inaudible], [Daisy Turner] And they'd all salute their partners, first of all, salute your partners, and then swing your partners and turn the same. [Jordan] 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.

[Daisy Turner] And this is New Year's Eve. Mother, ah, Mother. Can it be. And what a sad, sad change, Mother, this year has wrought in me. Last year, there was no merrier heart than mine. There was no brighter eye. There was no lighter step than mine. Now, Mother, what am I? A theme for every [inaudible], sunk lower than the slave, with a blighted name and a broken heart and very near my grave. So I feel that my day is numbered, my sand 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 [inaudible] 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 tales I'd read and of the songs I'd sung, how lofty lords wed village maids when beautiful and young. So I prize too much my beauty, which has fully been my bane, 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 pass me with a meaning look or with a mocking smile. Tis very hard, and yet I think I know, if they had borne what they, if they had borne what I have borne, I wouldn't treat them so. For I am bowed in deep disgrace by one I love beguile. He has left me in my shame alone and he will not own his child. But even now I do not think as hard of him as you. I do not think as hard of him as many others do. I know he done me bitter 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 babe. She has her father's face. His bright and laughing eyes. Had she a right to bear his name, how happy I could die.

But if she's like me, Mother, a bit wayward, a bit wild, 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, for within a peaceful dwelling house the [inaudible] my new year. [Jordan] Daisy Turner, remembering a New Year's recitation from childhood. Tomorrow on "Journey's End," Daisy's 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 Bonet. [Male speaker] 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 put a suit on him for breach of promise, alienation of affection and heart balm. [Daisy Turner's nephew] Mr. Bonet was a little short, stout man, very nice. And he seemed very fond of Aunt Daisy. Mr. Bonet was white and, it being a sort of a interracial case, it was very unusual at that time that they took it to court. [Male speaker] When the verdict was announced, her first words

were, "I am vindicated." [Jordan] 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 D. Bonet, 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. [Daisy Turner] And so our life run very easy, like a brook, just like a brook running. There was never no disharmony, and if anyone was going to go anywhere -- everybody was interested to have that one go, and if they didn't have enough money, a dollar, dollar and a half, everybody would get five cents or 10 cents of their money, or go and pick it up at the bank and let them have it or loaned it to them.

And if you had any food or anything special, we always shared with each other. [Jordan] Daisy Turner says their farm was called Journey's End because her father never wanted to go any farther after he got to that hilltop in Grafton, Vermont. Alec 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. Alec Turner, born a slave in Virginia in the 1840s, died in Grafton, Vermont, in December 1923. [Male speaker] 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 in a hearse that was not drawn by a horse.

Consequently, when he died in December '23, 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. [Daisy Turner] All the people that did know him, ever knew him, liked him, loved him, and they all knew 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 then they used to sing the little hymns, as I told you. "Oh, a little talk

with Jesus, how it smooths the rugged road, and how it helps me onward when I'm faint beneath the load, when my heart is crushed with sorrow, when my eyes with tears are dim, that naught can 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 makes it right, all right. In 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 Jesus Christ. [Jordan] Storyteller Daisy Turner. 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, at Journey's End, 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. [Daisy Turner] We just lost everything, everything [inaudible] that house burned down. I died. I died twice in life: the day my father died and the day that house burned down, that beautiful, that beautiful, beautiful Turner house went down in ashes. That's something never to be forgotten. [Jordan] Gone in the blaze was the blood-stained primer carried by Alec Turner throughout the Civil War. Gone, too, were 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. [Daisy Turner] See, we didn't just come from nothing and nowhere. We've got a background, and the background we traced right down to the roots. [Young woman speaker] 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. [Daisy Turner's nephew] Aunt Daisy passed away in February of 1988. [Jordan] Daisy Turner died at the age of 104. On her 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. [Daisy Turner] 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, when my life's work is ended, and I crossed the swelling tide, and that bright and glorious morning I should see. I will know my redeemer when I pass the other side, and his smile will be the first to welcome me." [Jordan] Vermont storyteller, poet and family historian Daisy Turner. I'm Barbara Jordan and this is "Journey's End."