An Old, Old, Old Friend

About the Book

My book, “An Old, Old, Old Friend” is the story that is partially true and partially fiction. It is about a woman I met when I was twelve years old and she was ninety-seven. I knew her for only a year and she became a close friend and mentor who changed the entire course of my life.

It is a story, which is partially based on facts, as I remember them, mixed with a fictional account of her life.

The story begins with Adelle (fictional name) and her parent’s arrival in New Orleans in 1848, when she was seven years old. It tells about what happened after the landing and how they settled into a homestead outside of the city.

The book is mostly fiction after that. It tells in detail the life story of an ex-slave named Abner Clayton who befriends them when they arrive and becomes a close friend and major influence in their lives.

It is true that Adelle attended a Catholic boarding school in New Orleans. The story of what happened to her is fictional but it is based on my recollections of what she told me.

She and her family endure many trials and tribulations adjusting to living in the New World. The book covers eighty-nine years as the saga of their lives continues and tells the story of the triumphs as well as the losses. After the Civil war, life in New Orleans became intolerable. Lynchings and beatings of black men was a common occurrence and was exacerbated as freed slaves from the Confederacy swarmed into the city along with displaced tenant farmers and angry Confederate veterans of the War. The situation worsened and, as she told me, the families had to leave New Orleans and settle in the north, outside of the former Confederate States. The story tells of the difficulties they had taking the trek north, in covered wagons and finally settling in Johnsville, (fictional name) Ohio. On the way, they experience various kinds of violence and discover that northerners are nearly as wary of blacks, though not as apt to resort to physical attacks. There was no institutionalized segregation as in the South but the whites did not want to interact with Negroes any more than the southerners did.

This book is a tribute to this woman and thousands of others like her who spent most of their lives fighting a determined opposition to suffrage for women by well more than a majority of the males. Suffragists were often attacked, maligned and vilified wherever they spoke out for their cause. Adelle was one of many women who spent most of their adult lives fighting for suffrage for both black and white women. I wrote “An Old, Old, Old Friend” as a thank you to her for all that she did for me when I needed it the most. The movement started in 1848 and lasted until the 19th Amendment was finally ratified in 1920. The last part of the book describes Adelle and her parent’s lives after traveling by train from Ohio to New York and settling in Oceanside, in the house she lived when I met her.

This story of Adelle graphically tells what life was like for women for centuries and lasted until the 19th Amendment was passed. As a child, females were the property of their father and when married became the property of their husband. It was, in essence, a life similar to slavery. They had no right to own property; any inheritance went to the husband to disburse. If they worked, their salary also was his to spend. They were considered too inferior to testify in court. As a result, divorce was not an option no matter how badly they were treated. When a woman was widowed, she could sometimes manage to inherit one third of his estate but was still subject to a male member of the family, who managed all of her affairs. Life was a continual struggle for women and the men were determined to keep it that way.

Before the passage of the 19th Amendment the attitude towards women by men and religion was s