Miss Katie's Rosewood (24 page)

A
unt Nelda showed us all around Philadelphia and we even took the train to New York City for a day. I got a chance to see Jeremiah again. In one of Papa's letters to Aunt Nelda, which she shared with us, he asked about the old family farm and if she knew where it was
.

“Where is it, Aunt Nelda?” Katie asked
.

“I don't know exactly, Katie,” she replied. “It's west of the city, out in the country near the Maryland border. I only saw it once.”

“That's where Rob lives, isn't it—in a town called Hanover?”

“Now that you say the name,” said Aunt Nelda, “I do believe it was outside Hanover. That would be a remarkable coincidence.”

“Who does it belong to now?” asked Katie
.

“I don't know. It passed out of the family years ago, in my grandparents' time—that would be your great-grandparents. They were Quakers, you see. My great-great-grandfather, Elijah Daniels, had come over with the elder Woolmans and John Borton on the Shield in 1678. Pennsylvania was largely Quaker land then, since William Penn had been granted much of it from
King Charles and bought still more land from Lord Berkeley and the Duke of York. The Woolmans and Bortons settled around Burlington on the Delaware River. But some of the adventurous ones struck out a little farther west into Penn's great track and that is how our people came to occupy and build their little homestead. My great-grandparents had eight children and my grandfather was the sixth. Everyone couldn't inherit the farm. He married and left. I'm not really sure how much longer it remained in the family. Our parents took us to look at it once—Rosalind and Ward and Templeton and me. But we were just children. We hardly paid any attention, not realizing that we were seeing our family's first home in the new world.”

“Could we go see it, Aunt Nelda?” asked Katie excitedly
.

“I don't even know if I could locate it, dear.”

“But could we try?”

“I suppose there'd be no harm in that.”

We set out two days later by train. Katie was so excited. She hadn't written Rob that we were coming and wanted to surprise him. We stayed in a hotel in York, then continued on and by early afternoon of the following day arrived in Hanover, where Aunt Nelda rented a horse and small buggy
.

We asked someone in town where the sheriff's office was, then rode to it. Katie hurried through the door almost without stopping, a big smile on her face. Sheriff Heyes sat behind the desk
.

“Miss . . . Clairborne, isn't it?” he said
.

“Yes,” answered Katie. “Hello, Mr. Heyes.”

“And Miss Daniels,” he added to me. “You seem to be recovered from your ordeal.”

“I am feeling much better now,” I said
.

“Where's Rob?” asked Katie
.

“I sent him down to Ellicott City for a few days. Then he was going to visit his parents.”

“Oh no!” said Katie
.

“You didn't come all the way from Philadelphia to see him?”

“Not exactly . . . but we wanted to.—Oh, Sheriff Heyes, this is our aunt, Nelda Fairchild.”

“How do you do, ma'am,” said the sheriff to Aunt Nelda, then turned back to Katie
.

“I'm sorry, ladies,” he said. “Rob will be mighty disappointed to have missed you, but like I said, he won't be back for a few days.”

Disappointed ourselves, we left Sheriff Heyes and continued on our errand to see if we could find the Daniels family homestead. It was so exciting, especially for Katie. Neither of us had stopped to think much about our kin who had come over from England, or that they were Quakers. But knowing that Katie's family came from Pennsylvania, we might have figured it
.

It took her several hours, but eventually Aunt Nelda saw a long road leading off the main road. There was an old half-rotted sign with the name Daniels carved into it. She pulled up the horse and stared all around. There were a few other farms about, one with a white man and black man working together leading a team of horses pulling a plough
.

“I think this is it,” she said softly. We all felt goose-bumpy, like something strange was about to happen
.

Slowly she urged the horse on and led it down the long dirt road. We came through some trees and into an open area where there was a large wooden house and barn. They were run-down, with boards off and windows broken. They didn't look like they'd been lived in for years
.

I looked at Aunt Nelda. She was just staring with a
faraway look, then sighed
.

“This is it, girls,” she said. “This is the house where your Quaker ancestors first set down roots in this country. This is the Daniels' homestead. I am not certain how much of this house is original. Probably not much. But this is where Elijah Daniels built his first home in America.”

We got down and walked around quietly. I peeked in the windows, though they were so dirty I couldn't see much of anything
.

“Look at this,” said Katie from over on one side of the house
.

Aunt Nelda and I walked over to join her. She was standing in front of eight or ten grave markers
.

“It's just like at Rosewood,” said Katie
.

“The Daniels' family plot,” said Aunt Nelda. “Just imagine . . . there is old Elijah Daniels and his wife Mary . . . John Daniels, Ezekiel and Eliza Daniels . . . William and Sarah Daniels . . . this is truly amazing to see.”

“It's sad to see it so overgrown,” said Katie. “Maybe we ought to clean it up and pull away some of the—”

Just then we heard some banging from the direction of the barn
.

“Somebody's here!” I said. “Maybe it's not deserted after all.”

“Whoever it is, maybe they know something about the place,” said Aunt Nelda. “I'm sure they won't mind us having a look around.”

Aunt Nelda led the way around the house and toward the barn where the banging was coming from. A horse was tied next to a watering trough. The noise was coming from up on the roof, where a man sat nailing on some boards
.

“Hello!” Aunt Nelda called up at him
.

“Oh . . . good day!” he called back, glancing down to where we stood. “I didn't know I had visitors.”

“I hope you don't mind,” said Aunt Nelda. “My great-great-grandfather, I believe, built the original house here. I was just showing my nieces around—if you have no objection.”

“Not at all . . . of course,” said the man. “I don't live here myself. No one lives here. But the owner's thinking of selling, so he hired me to do some work on the roof.”

“I see.”

“Go ahead and look around all you like. The house isn't locked. Have a look inside.”

As we went inside the house, which still had some of the old furniture in it, though dirt and cobwebs and broken windows were everywhere, Katie got so quiet I didn't know what she was thinking. She didn't say a word for probably an hour after we had said good-bye to the man working on the roof and had returned to Hanover. And by that evening we were on the late train back to Lancaster and then on to Philadelphia
.

W
e had an enjoyable time with Aunt Nelda, but I have to say that by the end of it I was itching to get back to Rosewood and the country. Sitting around inside a city house can drive you crazy after a while and it was starting to do that to me! It was wonderful having so many books around and all the time in the world to read. But I also wanted air and fields and woods and streams and cows and chickens and pigs! I couldn't wait to get home!

We once again visited the school we had come to see. The headmistress showed us all around and took us into several classes. Both Katie and I looked with yearning at the maps on the walls, and Katie almost drooled to see the piano in the music room and to hear a violin playing in the distance. There was so much to do, so much to learn about!

The headmistress invited us to stay for lunch. That's when we first began to realize that maybe things weren't as totally different here in the North as we had thought. We sat down at a table with the headmistress and some other girls and were then served by quiet young black girls in black dresses and white aprons.
Every once in a while one of them would glance in my direction, but I never heard a word from one of them. There were a handful of black girls that attended the school, but they mostly kept to themselves. Even here whites and blacks were separated. Would we ever find another place where we could be like we were at Rosewood?

It was a week before Katie's birthday when Papa and Uncle Ward would come to celebrate and then take us home
.

Rob wanted Katie to go down to Baltimore for a few days to visit with his parents and family. We had been so busy, but now, with so little time left, at last she did. We took her to the station and put her on the train, and then Aunt Nelda and I were left alone for the first time. I thought it would be awkward. I don't know why. You always expect folks to treat you different when you're colored. But I shouldn't have thought that about her!

We had a great time together. She was just like a mother to me. She taught me how to bake some of my papa's favorite foods and helped me make a pretty new dress
.

We went downtown several times. Aunt Nelda took me to the Philadelphia library and showed me around the historic buildings where the founding fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and things like that. I learned so much about our country's history from her. And she told me more about the family and really treated me like I was part of it, even though I was half Negro
.

Once in a while she would get a faraway look and begin reminiscing about her sister, Katie's mother, and my mother Lemuela too. I came to realize that it wasn't only Katie's mother who had loved Lemuela, but the whole family
.

The time I spent alone with Aunt Nelda flew by. I really came to love her like the dear aunt she was. She asked me lots of questions about Katie and me and how we had survived together at first, then about Papa and Uncle Ward. She sometimes got quiet. I wondered if she was almost envious of our life at Rosewood. It made me feel bad that we hadn't come to visit her sooner
.