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“…she helped organize…”
Stone, L. M. H., Chappell, W. O., Davis, B. M., & First United Methodist Church (Montgomery, Ala.). (1990). Hold fast to the faith: A history of First United Methodist Church (Cathedral in the Pines) in Montgomery, Alabama, 1929-1989. Montgomery, Ala: First United Methodist Church, p. 7.
“…acquiring full possession…”
Stone, L. M. H., Chappell, W. O., Davis, B. M., & First United Methodist Church (Montgomery, Ala.). (1990). Hold fast to the faith: A history of First United Methodist Church (Cathedral in the Pines) in Montgomery, Alabama, 1929-1989. Montgomery, Ala: First United Methodist Church, p. 8.
“…the wandering stars of Jude…”
King James Bible.
Jude 1:13: “Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.”
Daniel 8:10: “And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them.”
“An old slave, Pheriba…”
Gerald Thompson, a Westcott family descendant, recalled to me that there was an enslaved medical practitioner on the family plantation known as “Doctor Woman.” There is no record of the Doctor Woman, or what her name might have been. The character of Pheriba is derived from this bit of family lore. The name appears in the 1841 Westcott plantation materials. Pheriba, valued at $175, was assigned to Susannah Westcott, as is detailed later in the book. Pheriba does not appear in the 1828 documents, and no age is given. The relatively low value suggests either that she was very young, or that she was beyond childbearing years. I chose Pheriba as a likely candidate for the Doctor Woman, though of course others are possible.
The Westcott estate materials are held at the Montgomery County Archives in Montgomery, Alabama.
“…she found them in the woods…”
Narratives of Mary Kindred and Lu Lee.
Rawick, G. P., Hillegas, J., & Lawrence, K. (1978). The American slave: A composite autobiography: supplement, series 2. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Pub, Vol. 6, Texas, pp. 2200, 2295.
“Anarcha knew the stars weren’t falling…”
Likely apocryphal, this observation about the night the stars fell was attributed to Abraham Lincoln by Walt Whitman in 1882.
Whitman, W. (1882). Specimen Days and Collect, p. 336.