Running Out of Night
Page 18
Some of the names in my story were taken from historical records of the times. Yardley Taylor, a nineteenth-century mapmaker, nurseryman, and Quaker, was the president of the Loudoun Manumission and Emigration Society. He was known as the Chief of the Abolition Clan. So I chose him to be Asa’s father and Auntie’s brother.
William Still, the man who would shelter and move Brightwell and Zenobia north to Canada, was the fearless and relentless free Philadelphia black man who is often called the Father of the Underground Railroad. He directed a network of sympathizers, abolitionists, and safe houses and aided in the escapes of hundreds of fleeing slaves. He wrote detailed diaries of his work, which he kept hidden for the safety of the slaves and everyone involved. He wanted to make sure that the heroism and struggle of the slaves “be kept green in the memory of this and coming generations.”
Moses cat was named after heroic Harriet Tubman, a tiny escaped slave nicknamed Moses after the biblical prophet. Tubman bravely ventured back into Maryland many times to help her family and other enslaved people to freedom. She was an inspiration and a brilliant ray of hope to thousands.
Friend Hough and Friend Mount were two renowned cabinetmakers of nineteenth-century Waterford, Virginia. They carry out chairs and a rocker to fill the bed of the wagon above where Zenobia and Brightwell will hide.
The Catoctin Creek is a tributary of the mighty Potomac River. Waterford is the beautifully preserved Loudoun County village, where Zenobia, Lark, and Brightwell seek shelter. You can still visit Waterford and see the historic mills and the old stone meetinghouse (now a private home) where Lark hid from Shag Honeybone.
To plot the journey of Zenobia and Lark, I used the contemporary work of historical mapmaker Eugene Scheel of Waterford. His maps trace landholdings, homes, mills, stores, roads, churches, cemeteries, slave auction houses, and more through the centuries. I believe that while studying Scheel’s map of the Potomac River and surrounding areas, I located the farm my family owned in the 1800s.
The herbs, insects, birds, gardening, crafts, and ethnobotany mentioned throughout the book are my lifelong passion. For many years, I owned an herb shop surrounded by bountiful heirloom gardens, where I taught classes and held festivals. I spun wool, collected plants for natural dyeing, wove fabric, and made baskets. At a local natural history museum, I taught thousands of children about Native American ethnobotany, the secret lives of birds, California sea otters, gray whales, and monarch butterflies. These passions all became second nature to me, and a big part of Lark’s life in Virginia.
Just as Hannah doll is quilted with fabrics of many textures and colors, so my story was written—with memories, history, nature, dreams, hope, superstitions, fear, and love—patch by patch, stitch by stitch, until it is, as Lark said, “all of a piece.”
GLOSSARY
abolitionist: a person who worked to end slavery
bay: the sound of a barking or howling dog
bondslave: a white indentured slave
bornin room (also borning room): a room, normally close to the warmth of the kitchen, where mothers give birth
buckeye: the smooth seed of a North American tree; resembles the eye of a buck. Carried for good luck.
button ball: the seed balls of a sycamore tree
cheroot: a cigar with open ends
conductor: on the Underground Railroad, a person who helped guide slaves to safety
cooter: a North American river turtle
cottonwood: a tree often along stream-sides. Produces a cottony-looking seed. Leaves shimmer and shake in the lightest breeze.
crawdad (also crayfish): an aquatic arthropod in the crustacean class
dog days: the hottest, sultriest days of summer, usually from July 3 to August 11
fanny basket: a woven basket shaped like two melons that can carry heavy loads; also known as a buttocks basket
fetters: a metal band or chains around an ankle
First Day: Sunday
flighten: an old-fashioned way to say frightened and flighty
glistered: an old-fashioned word for sparkled or glittered
grit: courage
hetchel (also hatchel): a sharp-tined comb used to process flax (a fibrous plant) for weaving
hogshead: a large wooden cask often used for holding molasses
jar flies: dog day cicadas, insects that emerge in late July and August
leather britches: green beans threaded on string and hung until dried
lightning bug: a firefly, a type of beetle
log gum hives: hollow bee logs fitted with a roof
lung fever: pneumonia
madstone: a stone supposedly struck by lightning and believed to have healing powers or good luck
mallard drake: a brightly colored male duck
maul: a tool similar to a sledgehammer used for splitting wood
mica: a mineral that splits into sheets, often used as window glass in the 1800s
milk name: the first name given to a baby
millrace: the channel carrying swiftly running water
niddy noddy: a wooden tool used to make skeins out of freshly spun wool
Ninth Month: September
Nkanga hen: an African hen
ordinary: an old-fashioned name for an inn
pinders: an African slave word for peanuts
Quaker: a member of the Religious Society of Friends, a Christian organization devoted to peaceful principles
sanding floors: Lye and sand were used to scrub and clean old wooden floors.
shimmy: an old-fashioned word for chemise or undergarment
skein: a loosely coiled length of yarn and flax
slave runner: a person who helped slaves escape
soul driver: a person who traded in human slaves
sycamore button: a hard ball left after a sycamore sheds its many seeds
treacly: syrupy
treed: chased into a tree by dogs
Underground Railroad: a huge network of people who helped slaves escape to freedom
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bial, Raymond. The Underground Railroad. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995.
Carbone, Elisa. Stealing Freedom. New York: Yearling, 2001.
Duke, James, PhD. The Green Pharmacy. Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Rodale Press, 1992.
Fielder, Mildred. Plant Medicine and Folklore. New York: Winchester Press, 1975.
Fradin, Dennis Brindell. Bound for the North Star: True Stories of Fugitive Slaves. New York: Clarion Books, 2000.
Gorrell, Gena K. North Star to Freedom: The Story of the Underground Railroad. New York: Delacorte Press, 1997.
King, Wilma. Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995.
Pearsall, Shelley. Trouble Don’t Last. New York: Yearling, 2003.
Sawyer, Kem Knapp. The Underground Railroad in American History. Berkeley Heights, New Jersey: Enslow Publishers, Inc., 1997.
Still, William. The Underground Railroad: Authentic Narratives and First-Hand Accounts. New York: Dover Publications, 2007.
Taylor, Mildred D. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. New York: Dial Press, 1976.
White, Newman Ivey, ed. The Frank G. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. Vol. 7. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1964.
INTERNET SOURCES
Underground Railroad Resources in the U.S. Theme Study, United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service. www.nps.gov/history/nhl/Themes/UNGRR.FINAL.pdf
Voices from the Days of Slavery, Library of Congress. memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sharon Lovejoy is the award-winning, bestselling author and illustrator of nonfiction books about nature and gardening for children and adults. Running Out of Night is her debut novel. It draws on her ancestral roots in Virginia and her lifelong interest in nature, herbs, ethnobotany, and early American arts and crafts.
Her other books include the children’s gardening classics Sunflower Houses and Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots, which have introduced hundreds of thousands of children to nature. She is the winner of the National Outdoor Book Award in Children’s Literature for The Little Green Island with a Little Red House. Her writing has appeared in Ranger Rick magazine, in The New Book of Knowledge encyclopedia, and in educational testing materials in English and Spanish.
Sharon lives on California’s Central Coast and on a little green island in Maine. She is a frequent speaker at schools and for organizations across the country. Learn more about her at sharonlovejoy.com.