Yes. What a lovely love story.  You should write it as either an  
historical volume, or a historical novel. The later would easily make  
a movie.  It has all the elements.

-- Stephan


On 28 Jun 2007, at 14:54, qvarizona wrote:

> What a great love story!    Thank you, Paul.
>
> --Joanne
>
> Paul Heinegg <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Joanne, speaking of  
> slave narratives, my wife has an ancestor who is
> included in the slave narratives. Her ancestor told the following  
> story.
>
> "I was never a slave. Although I was born somewhere about 1855, I  
> was not
> born in slavery, but my father was. I'm afraid this story will be  
> more about
> my father and mother than it will be about myself.
>
> My mother was a white woman. Her name was Tempie James. She lived  
> on her
> father's big plantation on the Roanoke River at Rich Square, North  
> Carolina.
> Her father owned acres of land and many slaves. His stables were  
> the best
> anywhere around; they were filled with horses, and the head  
> coachman was
> named Squire James. Squire was a goood looking, well behaved Negro  
> who had a
> white father. He was tall and light colored. Tempie James fell in  
> love with
> this Negro coachman. Nobody knows how long they had been in love  
> before
> Tempie's father found it out, but when he did he locked Tempie in  
> her room.
> For days he and Miss Charlotte, his wife, raved, begged and  
> pleaded, but
> Tempie just said she loved Squire. "Why will you act so?" Miss  
> Charlotte was
> crying. "Haven't we done everything for you and given you  
> everything you
> wanted?"
>
> Tempie shook her head and said: "You haven't given me Squire. He's  
> all I do
> want." Then it was that in the dark of the night Mr. James sent  
> Squire away;
> he sent him to another state and sold him.
>
> But Tempie found it out. She took what money she could find and ran  
> away.
> She went to the owner of Squire and bought him, then she set him  
> free and
> changed his name to Walden: Squire Walden. But then it was against  
> the law
> for a white woman to marry a Negro unless they had a strain of  
> Negro blood,
> so Tempie cut Squire's finger and drained out some blood. She mixed  
> this
> with some whiskey and drank it, then she got on the stand and swore  
> she had
> Negro blood in her, so they were married. She never went back home  
> and her
> people disowned her.
> Tempie James Walden, my mother, was a beautiful woman. She was tall  
> and fair
> with long light hair. She had fifteen children, seven boys and  
> eight girls,
> and all of them lived to be old enough to see their great- 
> grandchildren. I
> am the youngest and only one living now. Most of us came back to North
> Carolina. Two of my sisters married and came back to Rich Square to  
> live.
> They lived not far from the James plantation on Roanoke River. Once  
> when we
> were children my sister and I were visiting Rich Square. One day we  
> went to
> pick huckleberries. A woman came riding down the road on a horse.  
> She was a
> tall woman in a long grey riding habit. She had grey hair and grey  
> eyes. She
> stopped and looked at us. "My," she said, "whose pretty little  
> girls are
> you?"
> "We're Squire Walden's children," I said. "She looked at me so long  
> and hard
> that I thought she was going to hit me with her whip, but she  
> didn't, she
> hit the horse. He jumped and ran so fast I thought she was going to  
> fall
> off, but she went around the curve and I never saw her again. I  
> never knew
> until later that she was Miss Charlotte James, my grandmother  
> [Narrative
> taken by Travis Jordan, NC Vol. XI, part II, pp.106-8].
>
> The records say as follows:
> Squire Walden married Tempie James by 28 March 1832 Halifax County,  
> North
> Carolina bond. Squire was the son of William[3] Walden of adjoining
> Northampton County, North Carolina (where Rich Square is located).  
> William
> (born about 1782) owned 164 acres in Northampton County and was  
> counted in
> Squire Walden's household in the 1850 census. William was the son of
> William[2] Walden of Surry County, Virginia, where he owned 74 acres.
> William[2] was the son of William[1] Walden who was a "Mulatto"  
> presented by
> the Surry County court for profane swearing in 1747. He owned 221  
> acres and
> slaves in Surry County, and was probably the child of a white  
> woman. The
> family was associated with the Chavis family since many members of the
> family used Chavis as a middle name.
>
> Tempie James was probably the daughter of Benjamin James who was  
> head of a
> Halifax County, North Carolina household of 7 "other free" in 1810  
> and owned
> 141 acres there in 1818. He descended from Andrew James, a slave  
> freed in
> York County, Virginia, in 1678!
>
> Paul
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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