Jane C. Beck

This is a remarkable recollection of the lives of the Turner family of Grafton, VT, whose patriarch's history of being seized in Africa and brought to the US is passed down through his son and his granddaughter Daisy, who lives to be 104. Alessi is the son of an Yoruba chief and an Englishwoman shipwrecked in Benin. He was taken from Lagos and survived the crossing to be sold in Virginia. Alessi marries a Native American woman and their son Alec fights alongside his former owner in the Civil War and moves to Maine, where he quarries slate, and then eventually to Vermont. Alec and his wife Sally have 13 children (Daisy is one of 9 daughters), a thriving farm, and the love and respect of their neighbors. The historian author was fortunate enough to meet Daisy before her death in 1988 and to include much of her oral history in this book. It's truly a miracle of success and of warm, loving family life set against inconceivable odds.… (meer)

What an incredible service author Jane Beck has done for Vermont as well as for African-American history. "Daisy Turner's Kin" is not so much the story of Daisy Turner (although Beck spent a great deal of time with Daisy and learned her history through a series of long conversations when Daisy was 100 years old), but rather the story of the entire Turner family from slavery in the South to a family farm life in the hills of rural Vermont.

Vermont has always been known as one of the whitest states in the country, if not the whitest. There may be many reasons for this: its tiny size and small population, its lack of large cities with big industries which might have attracted workers from the South (think Detroit), or possibly just the fact that there was never a high enough concentration of people of color to attract and hold others. Because of this, any look into the history of African-American or Native-American Vermonters is always important.

Jane Beck is Executive Director of the Vermont Folklife Center, and her background made her perfect for the oral history project highlighting Daisy Turner and her family. Oral histories have always been important in families, and no more so than in African-American families where, during slavery times, there were no other ways to ensure that family history got passed on. Beck has supplemented Daisy's oral history with deep research as is evidenced in the nearly fifty pages of end notes and bibliography in the book.

The Turner family settled in Grafton, a small town in southwestern Vermont. The state was chosen by the family patriarch, Alec, who remembered that during slavery, his young mistress taught him how to read and always told him that if he went to Vermont, he could be free. The Turners - who had a large family - lived a life not unlike other farming families in Vermont at that time - 1870s to the 1920s - and the book reveals interesting ways in which the family brought in other income to supplement their farming.

Beck pays a great deal of attention to history, and the first part of the book is devoted to Alec Turner and his parents during slavery in Virginia. The second part of book is about the Civil War and how Alec served the Union, but was never formally recognized or pensioned. After the war, Alec - an incredibly hardworking and ambitious man - went to Maine for work and finally settled in Vermont, buying land and building a home.

Of the many Turner children, most were girls and as they aged, it was interesting to read about where they went (most settled in the Boston area) and what they did for a living, and who they married. Their father, Alec, wanted them to marry men of color, but some of his daughters married inter-racially. Daisy did not marry, and she also lived the longest of anyone in the family. Hence, she was the one to tell much of the story, and her name graces the title of the book.

There have been other excellent books on African-American families and farmers in Vermont. "Discovering Black Vermont" by Elise Guyette comes to mind. But Beck's book on the Turner family is different as she spent so much time with Daisy and heard so much from her directly that the tone of the book is much livelier than Guyette's very good but more distanced work.

If one lives in Vermont or has ever lived there, the book may be even more special as one gets a close-up view of Vermont history at the same time that one is learning the history of the Turner family. Beck's work will also be of interest to genealogical researchers, oral historians, those interested in the Civil War or farming, and anyone who cares about African-American history. This is a very, very special book.… (meer)