This is a short, family history related to me by a family member, whose name is on the cover as the author. I wrote the story for the family in third person. It was published by the Fort Myers News-Press because of the family’s significance in the history of that city.

“Their love was forbidden; their survival as an interracial couple in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War and through the ensuing Jim Crow era was a miracle. Their union produced 11 children, to whom they gave storybook names—Benjamin Franklin, Lafayette, Ida Queen Victoria, Allie Ophelia, Emma Osceola Lavinia, and so on—and to whom they bequeathed an enduring legacy of self-respect, pride and ambition.”