About the Author

James D. Russell is an 84-year-old retired postal worker from the little village of Sperryville, Virginia, who has just published his first book—a true account of plantation life, slavery and the Civil War, told to him as a boy by his great-grandmother, who was a slave. The author helped take care of his great-grandmother, Caroline Terry, when she was more than 100 years old, and heard her tell of her life as a slave, her memories of the Civil War, and her post-war life of freedom until she died at age 108 in 1941.

He remembers how as a boy he would fetch her pipe and tobacco, turn down the oil lamp, and listen to her stories. He was about 12 years old at the time. “I would go to her house and spend the nights there,” Russell recalled. “She would prop herself up on the pillows in bed and tell stories of the plantation days. It was a nightly ritual.”

Now Russell is 84, and in the twilight of his life he has turned the tales of his great grandmother into a book that is a culmination of a long-held dream. He may be one of the few people alive today who can say he heard about plantation life, slavery and the Civil War from someone who lived it.

These and other stories of old Virginia are told in the book, which also includes a chapter of Mr. Russell’s recollections of growing up in Sperryville in the 1920s and 1930s, where he attended segregated schools and later went off to serve in the U.S. Army in World War II. Now retired, Russell began writing down the tales of his great-grandmother about 10 years ago. “It was my good fortune to have a first-hand chance to listen to Caroline’s stories of plantation days,” Russell said. “The important thing to me is that I listened to these stories in person and I touched the hand of history.”

James D. Russell is a natural story-teller who re-creates the world of “Sis-tah Cah-line” Terry with imagination and humor, and with the reverence of a loving great-grandson who still feels the presence of his slave ancestor in his life today.