Following up Betty DeRamus’s Essence bestselling Forbidden Fruit, Freedom by Any Means follows the story of extraordinary acts of courage and love by Blacks in the American slave era with beautifully written and inspiring stories of how slaves used the law—against all odds—to gain freedom for themselves and loved ones. In Freedom by Any Means, Betty DeRamus explains that “Much of what we think we know about African American history isn't completely true.” Slave freedom isn’t limited to the usual story—slaves gained their freedom by running away, being freed by their owners, buying their way out of bondage, or having someone else buy them. But history doesn’t account for the slaves who bluffed their way to freedom, sidestepped tricks and traps, won lawsuits, or even gained their freedom by their cooking. Riveting and surprising, DeRamus captures the tumultuous lives of the humans in inhumane situations who were able to salvage their families and marriages and achieve freedom together against tremendous odds. It takes a broader look at the various extraordinary ways that enslaved and dehumanized people achieved freedom and the means to a self-determined life. Among these people are visionaries who not only survived against the odds, but prospered—building businesses, owning land and other property. Freedom by Any Means also features the return of many of the beloved figures from her previous book Forbidden Fruit, including Lucy Nichols, Al and Margaret Wood, and Sylvia and Louis Stark. This inspiring account, steeped in rich historical research, attests to the resolve of the human spirit and reveals how men and women were willing to risk it all to escape the slavery.
Much of the history of the Sacandaga Valley in upstate New York was lost in the early part of the 20th century with the building of a dam and the flooding of a vast area of homes, farms, and villages. Researched and compiled by historians of three Fulton County communities, The Sacandaga Valley preserves part of that history by showing the people and the life that filled the valley before it was covered with a huge new lake. For years, the fertile valley contained prosperous villages with tradesmen and factories, a rail line, and one of New York's best-known amusement centers and resorts. The Sacandaga River was a lumber-transport route and every spring, thousands of spectators lined its banks to watch the river drives. Then, in 1920, the river was chosen as the site for a dam needed to control spring flooding in cities along the Hudson River, including Albany and Cohoes. In 1930, the valley was flooded creating the Great Sacandaga Lake.
I started to write a story about my parents and grandparents that I knew and remembered. I especially wanted to write about the changes in the way they lived and how so many things have changed even in my lifetime. I was born in 1931, in a different world than my grandchildren live in today. The changes and inventions that have occurred in the last 100 years and the ways they have changed the way we live are remarkable. The more research I did, the more involved and interested I became in history. No longer were the Puritans and Quakers just people that came to this country seeking religious freedom they were our grandparents. They helped to settle this great country of ours, endured all the hardships making it and us what we are today. I found many events that I had skipped over in history or had forgotten, but when you find your ancestors were there living those times they take on a different meaning. Fern Lancaster, my Uncle Jacks wife, was a Mormon or Latter Days Saint member and they are very big into genealogy. She was working on the Lancaster ancestry and my sister Donna and I assisted her in helping our parents and grandparents to remember. She would give me copies of the records she had made and I would toss them into a desk drawer, thinking someday I would like to do a little more on them. A Bob Hamby came thru Paducah, Kentucky and called our brother Bill, aka Sonny, and asked what his grandfathers name was? Bob explained he was a long distance truck driver and every time he went to a different city, he would look up the Hambys to see if they were related. He was from Florida. Bill told him he did not know his grandfathers name as he had died about the time he was born, but his sister, Donna, could give him that information. They exchanged telephone numbers. Donna and Bob played phone tag for several months, one day they connect. She told him her grandfather was William Logan Hamby. Bob told her, he had his ancestry and would mail it to her. Donna received the information and since she now lived in Kentucky and most of the Hambys had moved to Kentucky years and years before and stayed there, she was in the right place for researching. Donna started checking with people especially Dee Kunnecke. Every time I made a trip to Kentucky we checked censuses, graveyards and libraries to see what more we could find. Unfortunately, most of it was tossed into that drawer with all the other papers to work on at another time. Fern and Donna passed away and I thought if this is going to get done, I had better get busy: as I am not getting any younger. About a year and a half ago, I got out the drawer with all the papers and started trying to assemble them. I heard about Ancestry.Com and started looking up family trees. Some had very good information, others not so good, but helpful to say the least. Pretty soon I was an Ancestry.com junkie! (Note; not all the info is correct, you have to pick and choose.) My children gave me an I Pad for my birthday and a new world opened up to me. I found Google! Be-tween Ancestry.Com and Google I used reams of paper copying and comparing everything. I hope some of you will read my book and get as excited as I have been and continue to add to it for future generations. I have enjoyed writing this book, but what I have learned from the research about our families, ancestry and history of our country and how it was settled are too numerous to write. I feel that I have gotten to know these people and they are no longer just names. As I am computer illiterate, this book would never have gotten finished had it not been for the help that daughter Linda Nelson, granddaughter Candice Nelson-Hayes and grandson Jeff Workman gave me. They came running every time I yelled for help! Thank You! My daughter, Gail Kaiser, came to my aid with the pictures and captions, Thank you. Please do not grade me on my typing or grammar. Hopefully this book will give you a
Norman L. Lofland and Betty J. Lofland share the lessons they learned traveling, teaching, and living abroad in their memoir, How Not to Travel. The couple started their teaching careers at Bethel College, a Mennonite liberal arts college in North Newton, Kansas. In 1963, interesting adventures developed after a travel agent friend inspired them to apply for jobs in Beirut, Lebanon. The Loflands never imagined that they would end up teaching four decades abroad. Their adventures included meeting the Shah of Iran; having an audience with Colonel Muamar Khaddafi; interacting with Yasser Arafat before the Israelis bombed the Palestinian headquarters; driving a Karmann Ghia from Beirut to London and back, as well as from Beirut to Tehran and back; designing a theatre in Tehran with Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West architects; and perhaps most important, exchanging ideas with students in Lebanon, Iran, Tunisia, China, Macau, and North Cyprus. Join the Loflands as they recall the highs, the lows, and the life lessons they learned amid the reality of war, revolution, and exotic living.
In 1905, with her marriage dissolved and desperate to find a way to feed her children, Angela Hutchinson Hammer bought a handpress, some ink, and a few fonts of type, and began printing a little tabloid called the Wickenburg Miner. In her naïveté, Angela never dreamed this purchase would place her squarely in the forefront of power struggles during Arizona's early days of statehood. A true daughter of the West, Angela, born in a tiny mining hamlet in Nevada, came to the Territory of Arizona at the age of twelve. Betty Hammer Joy weaves together the lively story of her grandmother's life by drawing upon Angela's own prodigious writing and correspondence, newspaper archives, and the recollections of family members. Her book recounts the stories Angela told of growing up in mining camps, teaching in territorial schools, courtship, marriage, and a twenty-eight-year career in publishing and printing. During this time, Angela managed to raise three sons, run for public office before women in the nation had the right to vote, serve as Immigration Commissioner in Pinal County, homestead, and mature into an activist for populist agendas and water conservation. As questionable deals took place both within and outside the halls of government, the crusading Angela encountered many duplicitous characters who believed that women belonged at home darning socks, not running a newspaper. Although Angela's independent papers brought personal hardship and little if any financial reward, after her death in 1952 the newspaper industry paid tribute to this courageous woman by selecting her as the first woman to enter the Arizona Newspaper Hall of Fame. In 1983 she was honored posthumously with another award for women who contributed to Arizona's progress—induction into the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame.
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