Daisy Turner's Kin

April 27, 2015
Folklorist Beck’s story of the Turner family’s transition from freedom to slavery to freedom again is a marvel of scholarly storytelling, the culmination of 30 years of research. It is fascinating at two levels: for the compelling narrative of patriarch Alec Turner, seen first as a slave and then as a free man taking his place in a Vermont community, and for the glimpse into the process of pulling apart an oral history to tease out its broader meaning. Particularly gripping is the account of Turner’s father’s kidnapping in Africa and subsequent enslavement on the Gouldin plantation in Virginia, where Turner was born in 1845. The teenager took advantage of the proximity of Union troops in 1862 to escape, afterward changing his last name from “Berkeley” to “Turner” and serving in the First New Jersey Cavalry (though he was not allowed to formally enlist). Alec Turner went on to pass down his life story to his children, leading to his daughter Daisy, in the last years of her life (she died in 1988), sharing it with Beck. As a scholar, Beck aims to function as a cultural interpreter, taking what Daisy Turner told her and putting it up against the historical record while assessing how fact and story all fit together. The result is an engrossing American tale. 46 b&w photos.