Two Gold Rings and the Legend of Tall Tree

About the Book

In the year 1770, twenty-year-old Jacob Harris was called before the king, who knew of his great desire to go to the New World across the ocean. In respect for the dedicated service of Jacob’s father and grandfather to the Crown, the king presented him with a land grant of ten thousand acres, boat passage, and enough gold coins to start a new life in the new land. Jacob fell to his knees upon seeing for the first time the magnificent virgin trees and giving the name of Tall Tree to the vast acreage. He spent twenty years carving out many acres to plant and acres for grazing and built a large brick house before marrying Ruth, now thirty years old, whom he first met on the boat as a shy ten-year-old. A little girl at the time, telling her mother she just met the only man she would ever consider marrying someday. Several years after their marriage, they had one son, William. Jacob—even though he purchased slaves to help him and three other white men to clear the land—never treated them as slaves, taking time to educate them to do things and think on their own. William, who later inherited the land, followed and improved on his father’s ideas in the treatment of the black people. As a young boy, he forged a bond of great friendship with another young boy at the time. A boy of the black race who, by a quirk of nature, grew to a gigantic size. A sad time in the period of the Civil War, fate brought with her a heavy hand full of tragedies to dump on the beautiful grounds of Tall Tree and its inhabitants. The many tragedies that seemed to be unfair in its great toll on the Harris family. One was to cause the disappearance of two special gold rings, to finally return home from their travels in 1945, and to try once again to bring about the happiness they were forged to do eighty-one years ago.

About the Author

Thomas Daniel Payne, a.k.a. Tuck, is eighty-seven years old, was born in 1924 in Charlottesville, Virginia, lived in the Depression years, and was a high school graduate in 1942. He is a veteran of the Army Air Force in World War II, honorably discharged on February 1946. He married Ella, his only love, from Buckingham County, Virginia on January 1945. As Tuck said, she spoiled him for fi ftynine years before passing away. Together they shared their love with three boys and two girls. He worked as a master plumber, retiring in 1989. In 1968, they built a fi ve-room cottage on the Chickahominy River for boating and fl y-fi shing for bass. He woke up one night in 2007 having a great urge to write. He is trying to fi ll that urge with one fi nger and a laptop.