A Story Quilt: the Tranes on the Underground Railroad: Book Three, "The Sugar Creek Anthologies of Jesse Freedom" Series

By Judith Fowler Robbins

It was actually together that the men decided to return to Jamestown to take issue with the land company that had sold the tract to Captain Ballew. The agent had a solution: “Buy slaves to clear and terrace the acres; then, you can plant grass and grain to raise livestock and feed horses.”
Now this was a completely new notion to George. “Slaves?” He couldn’t believe his ears. “My father would never have approved of enslaving men.”
“It’s the only way to get ahead in America,” the agent barked. “It’s up to you, but you’ll take my advice if you’re smart. Otherwise, there’s nothing I can do. A deal is a deal.”
For a week, the Scotsman brooded over the matter while he tarried in Jamestown with his men. He thought of returning to Scotland to the farms and mills his older brothers had inherited. The thought made him almost ill. He decided that he could not go back – no matter what.”
“Work for my brothers?” he asked himself. “I’d be no more than an indenture myself.”
The more he thought, the more he could find no alternative to buying slaves if he wanted to claim his American inheritance. Half-heartedly, with more than a little remorse, George bought ten slaves at auction in Jamestown to work alongside the Scottish immigrants.
Among them were three women: one was a young mulatto woman called Lucy, who couldn’t have been more than fifteen; another was Sena, a thirty-ish, portly black woman who was presented on the block as a fabulous cook; the third was a portly grounds servant named Bess, who was advertized as an excellent gardener and herbalist.

In an effort to clear his conscience, George told himself that he would treat these ten American slaves as indentures, that he would release the slaves at the same time his Scotsmen finished their seven years with him. This notion of freeing the slaves after seven years was a private goal; but, so far as anyone else knew, they were slaves in the true sense of the word – for life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 8, 2008
• ISBN: 9781440108150

Judith Fowler Robbins

Judith Fowler Robbins lives in Indianapolis, Indiana, with her husband, Michael. She is the mother of two daughters, Juliana and Jennifer. She is a graduate of Indiana State University and worked in the School of Journalism at Franklin College for 18 years.

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A Story Quilt:

The Tranes on the Underground Railroad

Book Three

The Sugar Creek Anthologies of Jesse Freedom

Series

Judith Fowler Robbins

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Bloomington

A Story Quilt: The Tranes on the Underground Railroad

Book Three

The Sugar Creek Anthologies of Jesse Freedom

Series

Copyright © 2008 by Judith Fowler Robbins

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-4401-0814-3 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-0815-0 (ebk)

iUniverse rev. date: 11/17/2008

Contents

Part One

The Legend of Hamlet’s Treasure

Chapter 1

The Sugar Creek Storyteller

Chapter 2

Hamlet’s Treasure

Part Two

The Ballews of Scotland

Chapter 3

Scotland’s Fairies

Chapter 4

To the Manor Born

Chapter 5

Out of Scotland

Chapter 6

The Question of Freedom

Part III

The Ballews Rocks Plantation

Chapter 7

Winter at Ballew Rocks

Chapter 8

A New Baby in the Quarters

Chapter 9

Spirits in the Burying Ground

Chapter 10

Monkey Wrench

Chapter 11

The Griot

Chapter 12

Waiting for the Wheel

Chapter 13

Lucy’s Blues

Part Four

The Underground Railroad

Chapter 14

The Cave

Chapter 15

The Wagon Wheel

Chapter 16

The Unlikely Conductor

Chapter 17

A Light in the Attic

Chapter 18

The Great Valley Road

Chapter 19

Mountain Turnpike

Chapter 20

Freedom Songs

Chapter 21

Rafting the River

Part Five

At Home on Sugar Creek

Chapter 22

Hamlet Meets the Tranes

Chapter 23

Midnight at the Willard

Chapter 24

The Orchard

Chapter 25

At Home in Indiana

Part Six

Hamlet’s Treasure: A Reprise

Chapter 26

The Mystery in Squire Henry’s Field

Chapter 27

Spirits in the Sycamore

Chapter 28

The Reprise

Afterword

About the Author

A Story Quilt:

The Tranes on the Underground Railroad

Book Three

The Sugar Creek Anthologies of Jesse Freedom

Series

Juvenile Fiction

Judith Fowler Robbins

Author of:

American Spirits

Book One

The Sugar Creek Anthologies of Jesse Freedom

Series

Hamlet’s Quest

Book Two

The Sugar Creek Anthologies of Jesse Freedom

Series

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Dedicated to:

Kellan Crist

Tyler Stultz

Hanna Crist

Kyle Crist

Kira Crist

Teddy Gray

Levi Gray

A Glimpse of Pan

James Whitcomb Riley

I caught but a glimpse of him. Summer was here,

And I Strayed from the town and its dust and heat,

And walked in a wood, while the noon was near,

Where the shadows were cool, and the atmosphere

Was misty with fragrances stirred by my feet

From surges of blossoms that billowed sheer

Of the grasses, green and sweet.

And I peered through a vista of leaning trees,

Tressed with long tangles of vines that swept

To the face of a river, that answered these

With vines in the wave like the vines in the breeze,

Till the yearning lips of the ripples crept

And kissed them, with quavering ecstasies,

And wistfully laughed and wept.

And there, like a dream in a swoon, I swear

I saw Pan lying,--his limbs in the dew

And the shade, and his face in the dazzle and glare

Of the glad sunshine; while everywhere,

Over, across, and around him blew

Filmy dragon-flies hither and there,

And little white butterflies, two and two,

In eddies of odorous air.

Illustrations

The author used CorelDraw and Corel PhotoPaint

to compose the images in this book.

Underground Railroad Route

Eye

Lizzy, the Storyteller

Nanny on the Seahorse

Nanny in Hiding

Ballew Manor Scotland

Nanny Watches Baby Virginia

Ghost in the Buryin' Ground

The Monkey Wrench Quilt Block

The Griot

The Wagon Wheel Quilt Block

Lizzy's Story Quilt

A Light in the Attic Quilt Block

The Shoo-fly Quilt Block

Wolves in the Woods

American Spirits and Lucy at Home

Jack Beard's Poster

The Reprise

American Spirits/Hamlet's Quest

Who's Who

Characters

Slaves

American Spirits

Introduction

The Sugar Creek Anthologies of Jesse Freedom are stories of ordinary people on their ordinary ways in the Indiana heartland of Nineteenth Century America. They came from abroad: the British Isles, Germany and Africa. Written as a trilogy, the three books should be read in order. On the other hand, each could stand on its own.

Book One, American Spirits, introduces long lost twins, who are reunited by star-crossed lovers in the Indiana frontier.

Book Two, Hamlet’s Quest, is about an elderly orphan who searches for the root of his ancestry.

Book Three, A Story Quilt: the Tranes on the Underground Railroad, tells of a family of slaves who seek freedom.

Elizabeth Riley, Storyteller

A Story Quilt introduces Lizzy Riley, an enchanting young storyteller. She lives in a time when telling tales is a favorite pastime at community gatherings and in pioneer homes – in the days before electric lights, radios, and televisions transformed Indiana households.

A teenager, Lizzy tells stories passed down since the first pioneers settled around Riley’s Mill on Sugar Creek. The O’Shea’s, the Riley’s, the Henry’s and the Shuck’s will never be forgotten because of her.

The American Spirits

Once was the time when family fairies, who came to the New World with immigrants, played a role in guiding unsure steps into the American frontier. In those days, many believed that fate and fortune were not necessarily a result of chance. Uncluttered minds were more open to exploring nature’s mysteries. Apparitions visited children and will o’ the wisps flirted with adults.

From antiquity to today, half-seen energies have surrounded the human race – movements caught in the edge of an eye or a sudden chill. All can see them, for spirits are only inches away; but few do anything about it, few even notice the shadows and wisps of energy around them.

By the time Lizzy was born – a third generation American – Indiana settlements had grown, children had begun to congregate instead of playing by themselves, and fairies had faded into the woods and streams. Indeed, by Lizzy’s generation, the American Spirits had not materialized in years – even though they still rode the dew to settle the earth at night and turned the heads of sunflowers to chase the sun.

Sometimes, however, in dreams and daydreams, the plane on which the family fairies existed was revisited by those who grew up in their care – the Riley’s Mill pioneers. Although Lizzy had never met a fairy, her ancestors had. Her grandparents, in particular, told fairy tales about the wee people who came with them to America. Grandfather and Grandmother Riley told her about a German nix named Katrina, Grandfather O’Shea told her about the English brownie called Pitt, and Grandmother O’Shea told her about the Irish banshee, Keen. Their stories brought the old family fairies alive; but again, Lizzy had never seen a fairy. All of that was about to change.

In A Story Quilt: the Tranes on the Underground Railroad, a new fairy shakes up the American Spirits in Shane O’Shea’s woods, and they spring forth once again in full view of the storyteller, Lizzy. The new Beansighe sprite comes to introduce the Scottish Americans who indirectly bring change to the Riley Mill community, by way of the Underground Railroad.

The Scottish fairy sews a patchwork of stories into the fabric of Lizzy’s world.

A Note on Dialect

In the spirit of Hoosier Poet James Whitcomb Riley, much of the dialogue in the Underground Railroad chapters is written in dialect to reflect a time when slaves were not afforded an education, and white masters used the cruel word nigguh to further debase the people whom they enslaved. The language used by the character Lucas is remarkable in that he has overcome the speech barrier that stigmatizes his fellow slaves as stupid. Encouraged by his father and grandfather before him to learn proper English, his efforts to that end have paid off in that he acquires the respect and trustworthiness to be placed in a dignified, supervisory position among plantation slaves.

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Foreword

Something was going on down in Peter Henry’s bottom land below an Ancient Trail ridge in the Indiana heartland. The light from a single lantern was the only sign of it, at least from where Squire Henry, Peter’s son, stood on his own back porch.

It’s a hunter, he decided before going to bed for the night. Squire was the sole witness to the deed Hamlet Shuck was about that late autumn night; but he never, in the whole of his life, knew it.

Reunions

Hamlet, just home from a genealogical quest, which had taken him to Germany, had returned to the Shuck homestead on Sugar Creek. His family, pioneers in the community that had grown up around Riley’s Mill, was overjoyed upon his safe return. After a short reunion, Hamlet left again to return to work in his weaver’s studio in Indianapolis – the young state capital.

The American Spirits, fairies who resided in an old, white sycamore on Sugar Creek, were reunited, too. The nix, Katrina, and the enchanted owl, Watcher, had gone with Hamlet in the old country. They sometimes wondered whatever happened to a sea chest that Grandfather Shuck found in his father’s barn in Germany and brought back to America.

The question remained unanswered for a decade until the night a new sprite came to the woods. She was a Scottish beansighe (bean-sigh) named Nanny. By chance, she had come upon a group of neighborhood children who were listening to a storyteller. Lizzy Riley was telling a story about old Grandfather Hamlet’s sea chest.

The beansighe knew plenty about it, as we will see.

The Storyteller

Who was Lizzy Riley? Some say that the girl was enchanted, for long before she was even born, a fairy had predicted that a woods child would become a celebrated storyteller.

The prophecy had come true. Lizzy was the daughter of Mack Riley, a pioneer doctor, and his wife, Keren-happuch. The girl had grown up amidst the patchwork of interesting old souls and spirits on Sugar Creek.

The Riley Mill community of Lizzy’s childhood was small but ripe with both true pioneer stories and legends. The curious Lizzy never forgot the tales she heard. Her favorite pastime was to sit and listen to the stories the grown-ups told around their tables. It was not unusual for the neighbors — the Henrys or the Shucks — to find Lizzy tripping in and out of their cabins like one of their own children. She was what some would call a regular little busybody — but a much loved neighborhood kid.

Lizzy had always spent her summers with her Grandfather and Grandmother O’Shea. Their beautiful cabin sat in a bend of Sugar Creek upstream from her Grandfather Riley’s mill. Wild flowers covered the yard where she and her friends played, and a huge tepee-shaped tree there was home base to all of them.

Some of Lizzy’s most bizarre stories were embellished to include the little people who supposedly lived inside the old white sycamore. She called them the American Spirits.

Part One

The Legend of Hamlet’s Treasure

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Chapter 1

The Sugar Creek Storyteller

‘Those who look not upon themselves as

a link connecting the past with the future do not

perform their duty to the world’

— Daniel Webster

Once, when Lizzy Riley was a teenager, a group of neighborhood children gathered in the clearing that was her Grandfather O’Shea’s yard. A proud, old sycamore spread a lush canopy of leaves above them, but the dark woods outside seemed just a little bewitched to some – even haunted to others. The excited friend tingled with goose bumps and sat huddled in blankets on a circle of logs — their fairy ring — and anxiously awaited the storyteller.

Whispers of excitement floated from their midst, and each set of eyes was upon the wide slit in the great white tree above Sugar Creek. It was from this "fairy