She was deemed unfit for marriage, so her father married her off to the strongest slave, Virginia, 1856….- tamy

Twelve marriage attempts arranged by my father ended in the same number of rejections, and each one was harder than the last.

“She can’t walk down the hall.” “My children need a mother who will run after them.” “What good is it if you can’t have children?” This last rumor, completely false, spread like wildfire in the Virginia community.

The doctors speculated about my fertility without even examining me. Suddenly, I was no longer just a disabled person, but a defective person in every way, which was significant for America in 1856.

When William Foster, a fat, drunken fifty-year-old man, rejected me even though my father offered him a third of our annual inheritance earnings, I understood the truth: I will die alone.

But my father had other plans. Radical, shocking plans, completely outside all social norms, to the point that when he told me about them, I thought I’d misunderstood him. He said, “You will marry Josiah, the blacksmith.” You will be his wife.