Lorenzo Dow Turner: Connecting Communities Through Language.
By The Black Scholar
- Release Date: 2011-03-22
- Genre: Social Science
Description
Roots of Excellence: 1799-1906 WHEN LORENZO DOW TURNER was born in 1890 his African American family was already in its fourth generation of freedom. The Turner clan had started around 1799 in Gates County, North Carolina, with the relationship between Sally Rooks, a white woman of Scottish-Irish descent, and a black slave named Jacob Brady. Brady probably belonged to Sally's father, Joseph Rooks. Sally and Jacob had four daughters during a period of twelve years. These daughters were born free since the statutes in the South at that time stipulated that a child's legal status followed that of the mother. The last daughter, Margaret (Peggy), was born around 1812. On April 17, 1828, Peggy married Daniel Turner, a free man of color who was a landowner and a Baptist minister who knew how to read and write. They would be the paternal grandparents of Lorenzo Dow Turner. They had twelve children and the Turner clan was known as being "up-headed people." They were hardworking, well educated for the times, and were able to buy land.
