Daisy Turner’s Kin

Vermont folklorist Jane Beck shares the story of the Turner family, a multi-generational saga spanning two centuries, played out across three continents. The saga was related to Jane Beck by Daisy Turner, a Grafton, VT resident born to freed slaves, who had listened to her father, Alec Turner, recount stories of the family past. Her captivating narrative covers the early 19th century British-African trade, shipwreck, birth of a biracial child, slave trading, enslavement, plantation life, escape, Civil War, moving north, battling racism, buying land and settling on a hilltop in Vermont that became a family center.

Daisy also shared her own life story, a powerful and rare account of the African American experience in New England from the 1880s forward.