Harcourt to Publish Rare Slave Narratives

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- An upcoming book will offer rare personal, firsthand accounts of slaves' lives.

Tentatively titled "Rowing to Freedom," it tells the stories of Wallace Turnage and John Washington and recalls how both men used rowboats to escape from slavery during the Civil War.

"Both are examples of what scholars call self-emancipation. These are two young men who took it on their own bravery to find their own freedom," Blight said. "They really humanize the process by which a slave actually became free."

Blight, the head of Yale's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, hopes the book will appeal to scholars and to a general audience, following the success of "The Bondwoman's Narrative," a novel from the 1850s by former slave Hannah Crafts that was published in 2002.

"It's going to be good scholarship, but we are going to try to reach the broadest possible audience for this," Blight said.

Turnage's story became known through unusual circumstances. His daughter, Lydia Turnage Connolly, died in 1984 and left the manuscript to her Greenwich neighbor, Gladys Watt.

Watt saw a TV show in 2001 about the importance of slave narratives, and she arrived soon after at the Greenwich Historical Society to donate Turnage's manuscript, said Debra Mecky, the historical society's executive director.

The society researched the manuscript for about a year to certify its authenticity and to gather as much information as they could about Turnage. In 2002, the society invited Blight to speak at the society, and Mecky asked him for advice about the manuscript.

"Although we could have published the slave narrative ourselves, we thought this book would give it greater visibility," Mecky said.

Washington's narrative, which has been at the Massachusetts Historical Society, is the property of Julian T. Houston, trustee of the Alice J. Stuart Family Trust.

Blight said he was struck by the fear and religion that run through both narratives. They also showed "a desire to be known," Blight said. "They really wanted them to be read."