February is Black History Month, so we turn to two extraordinary Black women whose stories point to the important role Black people played in the shaping of Vermont. The episode begins with narrator explaining how Black stories have too often been under-appreciated. For instance, nobody knows Brattleboro's first black landowner, Benjamin Wheaton, an accomplished furniture maker and prominent person, bequeathed the West Brattleboro town common to the town. The host describes the remarkable Grafton storyteller Daisy Turner, whose story begins at 4:05. Narrator Jane Beck first met Daisy Turner when Daisy was 100 years old. Beck says Daisy 'spoke about the Civil War as if it were yesterday.' Beck was "astounded by the scope and significance' of Daisy's family's story from slavery, to Civil War, to freedom in Vermont and life in Grafton. We hear Daisy's vivid voice tell how her father -- Alec Turner - 'the strongest man in Grafton' carried a full flour barrel up the hill to their home "Journey's End' to win a bet. Beck helped found the Vermont Folklife Center and worked with the Windham Foundation to create the Turner Hill Interpretive Center around this work. Beck received a Peabody Award for an audio documentary about the Turner family as told by Daisy. The tape transitions at 9:15 to the mellifluous voice of narrator Desmond Peeples introducing the story of Lucy Terry Prince (1730 - 1821), a freed and learned African woman, whose legal arguments swayed the Vermont Republic's highest court. In 1764, Lucy and her husband Abijah, a free black couple, settled on 100 acres in Guilford as one of Guilford's first landowning settlers. There, they raised six children and defended their rights as landowners against the vicious efforts of certain racist neighbors. By the end of the 18th century, Guilford was the most popular town in Vermont and the Princes were one of its most prominent families. Lucy Terry Prince's only known surviving poem is called 'Bars Fight'. Lucy Terry Prince was about 20 years old and enslaved in Deerfield MA in 1746 when she witnessed an attack by indigenous people of the area on townspeople in Deerfield. The incident became known as the Bars Fight because it happened on the ‘bars’, a colonial term for meadow. She documented this historical incident in her poem, the oldest known work of literature by an African American. 'Bars Fight' survived in oral tradition about 100 years after her death, and appeared in print for the first time in 1854 on the front page of the Springfield Daily Republican. Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, biographer of the Prince family, reads from her book 'Mr. and Mrs. Prince' about the attack on the Prince home. Multi-media artist and poet Shanta Lee shares some thoughts about Lucy and recites the poem "Bars Fight." The host ends the podcast by describing the Brattleboro Words Project's long effort with the town of Guilford to place a state historic marker honoring Lucy and the Prince family in 2021 at the Guilford Welcome Center (at Exit 1 on Interstate 91) and reads the actual text of of the marker. She also mentions that a joint Vermont State Legislature proclamation led by then State Representative Sara Coffey recognizing Lucy, the marker and the Princes.
This episode of the Brattleboro Words Trail Podcast was narrated and executive produced by me, Lissa Weinmann. Editing for the overall podcast was by Alec Pombriant. Audio Producer for the Daisy Turner segment was the Vermont Folklife Center, with research & narration by Jane Beck. Desmond Peeples produced and narrated the Lucy Terry Prince segment. Author Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina read segments from her book "Mr & Mrs. Prince: How an Extraordinary Eighteenth Century Couple Moved Out of Slavery and Into Legend“ and the reading of Lucy Terry Prince’s poem “Bars Fight” with comments and research was by Shanta Lee, who is also a member of the Brattleboro Words Trail Advisory Team. The photo of Daisy Turner was taken by Jane Beck.
A great video of the celebration placing the marker referenced in the podcast can be viewed at https://www.brattleborotv.org/brattleboro-words-project/abijah-and-lucy-terry-prince-dedication-state-historic-marker/
A joint Vermont House and Senate resolution recognizing Lucy Terry Prince brought forth by then State Rep Sara Coffey in 2021 and referenced in the podcast is here: https://legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2022/Docs/ACTS/ACTR097/ACTR097%20As%20Adopted.pdf
DAISY TURNER AND LUCY TERRY PRINCE: 'NOW THAT'S THE TRUTH'. TRANSCRIPT
HOST Lissa Weinmann: February is Black History Month, a time to honor the many stories of Americans our society has tended to suppress over time. The Brattleboro Words Trail celebrates the richness inherent in the various voices that define and have defined Brattleboro, Vermont and the United States at large. We seek to raise them up so we can learn from history and understand the currents that have led us to where we are today.
So in honor of Black History month, we chose to feature the stories of two very impressive black women who lived in the Brattleboro corner of the state of Vermont. Though these women lived a couple hundred years apart, their strong voices continue to reverberate today. They were special, but not all that unique, because black people owned farms and land and contributed widely to towns all over Vermont, though these contributions have been mostly side-lined, if heard at all.
Most people still don’t know that the West Brattleboro town common was given to the town by a black man named Benjamin Wheaton. In 1786, he was the first black man to own land in the town of Brattleboro. In 1791, the year Vermont joined the United States, Benjamin Wheaton took the Freeman’s Oath so he could vote in Vermont elections. He owned many books and bought a share in the privately owned first Brattleboro Library. He also bought a pew in the local church, a sign of status at the time, and served the community as a woodworker and furniture craftsman. When he died he donated his land to be used for the good of the town. The Brattleboro Words Trail is planing to place a marker there on the Common to recognize his gift. The Vermont African American Heritage Trail is a great resource for learning about the contributions of other Black Americans living all across the state.
Daisy Turner lived in Grafton, where her family owned a farm and were well-respected members of the community. In the audio that follows, Jane Beck introduces you to Daisy. Jane met Daisy back in 1983, when Daisy was already 100 years old, but still full of life and full of stories. Jane recognized how valuable Daisy’s stories were and began recording the saga of the Turner family from enslavement, the Civil War, to freedom in Vermont and all kinds of sparkling details about the life of Grafton of that time. Jane founded the Vermont Folklife Center around this work with Daisy. In 1990 she won the prestigious George Peabody Award for Documentary Radio Programming for her audio documentary, Journey’s End: The Memories and Traditions of Daisy Turner and Her Family. Journey’s End was the name of their farm, up on a hill in Grafton.
Working with support from the Windham Foundation and others, the Vermont Folklife Center helped create the Turner Hill Interpretive Center in Grafton. There, the story of escaped slave Alec Turner and his family, as told by his daughter Daisy, invites people to discover how this small Vermont community of hill farmers and loggers became his "Journey's End". Let’s listen now to Jane Beck and the remarkable Daisy Turner
JANE BECK, NARRATOR: I first met Daisy Turner when she was 100 years old. Her energy, her voice, her ability to bring her stories to life, stunned me. She spoke of the Civil War as if it had occurred yesterday, pointing out that if it hadn't happened, “I would be a slave this minute talking to you”. The words poured out of her as if a dam burst. She was driven to tell her story. And as I began to document and verify it, I was astounded by its scope and significance.
DAISY TURNER: And then on the top of it all, in the very midst of the 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 told it again and again– he heard the hoof beats up as they 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.’
BECK: Daisy, a middle daughter of a formerly enslaved couple, was born in 1883 in Grafton, Vermont. In the tradition of the West African griot, who served as historian, genealogist, storyteller and singer for his community, Daisy was the keeper of her family's story, a saga that spanned two centuries from Africa through two generations of enslavement on a Virginia plantation, escape, the Civil War, moving north and eventual settlement on a hill farm in Vermont. It is a unique story featuring strong personalities who, despite the conditions, always maintained their personal dignity. Her father, Alec, a charismatic individual, wanted his family to understand what life under the shackles of slavery had been like, and to remember. This was unusual at the time, as most wanted to put such things behind them, and to forget, Daisy herself proved to be a strong and vigorous character, always standing tall against racism and for her own rights. Her stories pull us right into the thick of things. Daisy's father, Alec, not only a fine raconteur and singer, was a bull of a man. While most Vermonters used a three and a half pound ax, he cut twice as much wood with a four pound ax. It was through a bet and an extraordinary feat of strength, that he gained the reluctant admiration of his neighbors and became known as the strongest man in Grafton.
DAISY: Bill Wyman said, “If you could carry a bag barrel of flour home Alec, I'd give it to you.” So Father said, “You’re lost because I'll pick it up when I go.” So father finally got ready and got started. So he put the barrel of flour – and he told me many a time just how to do it – just right on 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 there must have been at that time, 40 men all following him, with (laughter) them jugs of Jimmy Jon and hard cider and all. And mother told many times how after that they all got drunk! And they all were 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 and to have bread. Now that's the truth, if I never speak a word again.
HOST: Another truth teller on the Words Trail is Lucy Terry Prince. She is considered the first known African American poet in what is today the United States. Lucy lived in Guilford, Vermont, just south of Brattleboro. Listen to Desmond Peeples for a taste of Lucy’s dramatic story, and afterwards I’ll tell you a bit more about a state historic marker the Brattleboro Words Trail helped place so more people can be aware of the important legacy of the Prince family.
DESMOND PEEPLES, NARRATOR: Up the hill and around the corner from Sweet Pond State Park in Guilford, Vermont, is Abijah Prince Road, a narrow dirt lane stretching for a half mile or so under a dense tree cover and dappled sunlight. Today, it leads past a handful of homes to a grassy trail. But two centuries ago, it led to the farmstead of Abijah and Lucy Terry Prince, a free black couple and one of Guilford’s first landowning settlers.
Abijah and Lucy met in the 1750s in nearby Deerfield, Massachusetts, where Lucy was enslaved. Abijah, a successful freed man from Curacao, bought Lucy's freedom and married her. And in 1764, they settled in Guilford.
Over the next 50 years. The princes would raise six children, create a gathering space for local slaves and freed people, and defend their rights as landowners against the vicious efforts of certain racist neighbors.
The Prince family and Lucy Terry in particular, left an indelible mark on the history and identity of Vermont. By the end of the 18th century, Guilford was the most popular town in Vermont, and the Princes were one of its most prominent families. Their home was an embattled and unshakable center of black community, secured largely by the anomalous power of Lucy herself, a freed, literate, learned African woman in colonial New England, a writer and orator whose legal arguments swayed the Republic of Vermont's highest court and whose poetry and storytelling is recited still today. The following is a snapshot of Lucy Terry's story and a recitation of her only surviving poem, told by local author Shanta Lee Gander and the historian Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, author of Mr. and Mrs. Prince: How an Extraordinary 18th Century Family Moved Out of Slavery and into Legend.
GRETCHEN HOLBROOK GERZINA: On Tuesday, October 4th, 1785, half a dozen men, later described by the courts as a mob, armed themselves with clubs and crashed through a farm gate and into the Guilford, Vermont, House of AbIjah and Lucy Prince. Several of the attackers had wrangled with the Princes in court on and off over small debts and trumped up transgressions for months, financed and encouraged by the Prince's nearest neighbor. They hounded the former slaves. But the elderly Abijah and Lucy not only refused to be intimidated, but responded to every assault with defiance.
Only five months before, Lucy had left behind her 80-year-old husband to guard the house while she traveled north to take their complaints to the highest governing body of the independent Republic of Vermont. And she powerfully impressed the governor and council with the first speech they had ever heard by an African-American. She returned with an order of protection, but it had no effect against the thugs who were now breaking down her door. They made their way inside, brutally beating the Prince's hired man, a mulatto. Abijah and Lucy escaped harm, but the attackers set fire to their hey rick as they raced off. No hay could mean no food throughout the coming winter for the livestock, and therefore no food for themselves, or transportation, or a way to make a living. It was likely to mean poverty, starvation and failure.
Others might have given up, but Abijah and Lucy had not faced a lifetime of warfare and the struggle for their own freedom in order to be run off their hundred acres. Instead, they went straight to the authorities and lodged complaints within days. Arrest warrants were issued for all six attackers. One absconded, but the others were locked up and all eventually ended up before the law. With three of the Princes and a large number of others subpoenaed to testify against them.
SHANTA LEE: This is Shanta Lee, and I bring to you, Lucy Terry Prince's only surviving poem that we know of, ‘Bar's Fight’. Lucy Terry would have been about 20 when a massacre took place in 1746. She documented this historical incident in her poem ‘Bars Fight’. It is the oldest known work of literature by an African-American. 'Bars Fight' survived in oral tradition about 100 years after her death and appeared in print for the first time in 1854 on the front page of the Springfield Daily Republican. 'Bars' or 'the bars', is a colonial term for meadow.
As you listen to the poem, think about it, especially in relationship to the fact that Lucy Terry was still very much a slave while writing about what she witnessed in Deerfield. So here I bring to you - ‘Bars Fight’:
August ’twas the twenty-fifth,
Seventeen hundred forty-six;
The Indians did in ambush lay,
Some very valiant men to slay,
The names of whom I’ll not leave out.
Samuel Allen like a hero fought,
And though he was so brave and bold,
His face no more shalt we behold
Elezer Hawks was killed outright,
Before he had time to fight, –
Before he did the Indians see,
Was shot and killed immediately.
Oliver Amsden he was slain,
Which caused his friends much grief and pain.
Simeon Amsden they found dead,
Not many rods distant from his head.
Adonijah Gillett we do hear
Did lose his life which was so dear.
John Sadler fled across the water,
And thus escaped the dreadful slaughter.
Eunice Allen saw the Indians coming,
And hopes to save herself by running,
And had not her petticoats stopped her,
The awful creatures had not catched her,
Nor tommy-hawked her on the head,
And left her on the ground for dead.
Young Samuel Allen, Oh lack-a-day!
Was taken and carried to Canada.
HOST: In 2021, the Brattleboro Words Project worked with the town of Guilford and the Vermont Division of Historic Preservation to erect a historic marker for Lucy Terry Prince and her family at the Guilford Welcome Center at the first exit in Vermont coming north on Interstate 91. Hundreds of thousands of people annually stop at this so-called ‘Gateway to Vermont.’ A beautiful video of the unveiling ceremony is available as a link on the podcast page.
The sign is entitled: Early Landowners and First Known African American Poet and it reads as follows:
Abijah Prince (c. 1706-94) served in the French & Indian Wars, as a slave and freedman. In 1751, he achieved his freedom and registered as a taxpayer and proprietor for land ownership. Lucy Terry (c. 1730-1821) was stolen from Africa as a child and enslaved in Deerfield, MA. Her only surviving poem “Bars Fight” records the 1746 attack on Deerfield settlers. The singsong ballad, the earliest existing poem by an African American, endured in oral tradition for over 100 years before appearing on the front page of the Springfield Daily Republican in 1854. Lucy became free sometime after they married in 1756. In 1769 they began settling 100 acres in Guilford.
The other side of the sign reads:
Seekers of Justice to Protect Land Rights
The Princes valued the importance of land ownership and used the law to protect their rights. Upon settling in Guilford, they faced ongoing harassment that resulted in damaged property and crops. In 1785, Lucy brought the case before the Governor and Council, winning her protection request. In 1803, Lucy’s sons brought a land rights case against Eli Brownson, which went as far as the Vermont Supreme Court. She was awarded $200 but not the land in Sunderland. As the widow of an original proprietor, she continued to claim her rights to the land. By 1806, the Princes were able to settle on lots the Sunderland Selectmen purchased from Brownson to truly settle this debt.
A Vermont State proclamation was also enacted in honor of the unveiling by then Vermont State Representative Sara Coffey, the contents of which can also be accessed on the podcast page. We’d like to Shanta Lee and everyone who was involved in the long, hard process of making that historic marker into a reality. We’d especially like to thank the Vermont Folklife Center for its support of the Brattleboro Words Project and everything it does to preserve the voices and traditions that make Vermont a place where stories like Daisy’s and Lucy’s are respected, and culture thrives.
CREDITS: This episode of the Brattleboro Words Trail Podcast was narrated and executive produced by me, Lissa Weinmann. Editing for the overall podcast was by Alec Pombriant. Audio Producer for the Daisy Turner segment was the Vermont Folklife Center, with research & narratio by Jane Beck. Desmond Peeples produced and narrated the Lucy Terry Prince segment. Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina read segments from “Mr & Mrs. Prince: How an Extraordinary Eighteenth Century Couple Moved Out of Slavery and Into Legend“ and the reading of Lucy Terry Prince’s poem “Bars Fight” with comments and research was by Shanta Lee, who is also a member of the Brattleboro Words Trail Advisory Team.
Thanks for listening. We look forward to seeing you next month on…the Brattleboro Words Trail Podcast.