Colonel Richard Whitmore, my father, owned five thousand acres of land and two hundred slaves. He could negotiate cotton prices across three states, yet he could not negotiate my value on the marriage market. After the twelfth rejection—a fifty-year-old drunk named William Foster, who turned me away even after my father offered him a third of our annual profits—I understood one immutable truth: I would die alone. My father knew it, too, and the fear of leaving me unprotected haunted him.
She Was 41 and Town Had Long Stopped Watching Her Door - He Was New to Town and Watched It Every Day - YouTube
An Impossible Proposal
One evening in March 1856, my father called me into his study.
“I will marry you to Josiah,” he said.
I burst out laughing—not because it was funny, but because it was impossible.
“The blacksmith,” he clarified.
The room fell silent.
“Father… Josiah is a slave.”
“Yes,” he said firmly. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
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