I was driving down Route 15 just across the river from Harrisburg, Pa. when I was shocked to come over the hill to see my daughter Stephanie featured on a bill board for Central Pennsylvania College. At that time, she just graduated with Honors with a BS Degree in Criminal Justice. She graduated at the top of her class. I stopped and got on my cell phone, called her, and asked her about this bill board. To her surprise, she knew nothing about it.
Today, she has an MBA and is a Resource Manager, reporting to the CEO of Credo Technology Solutions, Inc. One function of her job is to be over the Dept. that handles Contracts and the Human Resource Dept. She looks for people who have good computer skills. She places them in good high paying jobs.
Stephanie Tulloch, MBA
Resource Manager
Credo Technology Solutions, Inc.
Cell: 717-379-7297
With the economy going to "Hell in a Hand basket", I know few people tripling their pay and moving up in corporate America. I know fewer Black women who is doing that. But Stephanie is young and has the drive to make such moves. Recently, I visited her house on a Saturday to take her oldest son swimming. She was on the phone, completing a business deal. I had to wait until she was done so that we could leave to go swimming.
She reminds me of me! But she also reminds me of someone else in my family. Someone who lived a long time ago.
This is my mother born in 1923 with the name of Jean Julia Brown. She grew up in the Great Depression and during the Second World War. She married William Jackson Williams II. After the war, women took the position that they were to stay home and have children while the men worked.
My mother is the first daughter of John and Eliza Lucinda Brown. They are my grand parents. Most of my mother's child hood took placed at John and Lucy's house on Third Street in Steelton, Pa. They moved here after getting married at Free Union Baptist Church in Stony Point, Va., near Charlottesville, Va. They were on their way to Pittsburgh, Pa. were John Brown hoped to work in the Steel Mill. Instead, John ran out of money and had to stay in Steelton and work in the Bethlehem Steel Mill. What people did not know at the time, the Great Depression was starting. Dispite that, the Browns were able to move to another state, start a family, and get a job.
My Grandmother Born Eliza Lucinda Blue Dec. 23, 1899 - Died July 9, 1966.
They called her Lucy Brown.
Ex-slave Eliza Thorne and Stephanie's Grandmother 9th removed. Stephanie is much like Eliza Thorne. Eliza was an ex-slave but believed in economic power. She was half Cherokee. In 1864 - 1865, Union troops liberated Culpeper, Va. They freed the slaves. Her master was more likely Russell Brown and during the Civil War Colonel Slaughter's family. Stephanie's family (Porter family) on her mother side still lives at the base of the hill where the Slaughter's had their plantation.
Eliza Thorne had three husbands in her life time. One was her slave husband, James Graves. the second husband was Robert West. The third husband Reuben Walker. Stephanie is a decendent of the Reuben Walker Family because Lucy's father and mother Eliza J. Walker and George W. Blue, married in 1895 at Free Union Baptist Church in Free Union, Va. The Walker's come from Eliza Thorne's third family. Here is why Stephanie is a hard core Baptist.
Virginia slave law allowed slaves to have a business and make money when they were not working for the master. Eliza had a skill. She was a Carpenter. She made furniture. When I was 21 years old, I had the pleasure of seeing some of the bedroom furniture that she made at Joseph Blue's home (brother of Lucy Brown).
Place the link below in your browser.
http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/culpeper_County_During_the_Civil_War
Culpeper County 1860 - 1865
Russell Lewis Brown , born 1835 in Culpeper County, Virginia; died 1863 in Louisiana.
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| Russell Lewis Brown served in the C.S. Army |
After the Civil War, Eliza Thorne bought a Conestoga Wagon, a team of horses and moved her family to Stony Point (Free Union) Va. Here, she bought eleven acres of land. All this just after the Civil War and at the start of the Post Civil War Depression. She was working against social odds. "Free Union" areas in Virginia were places where freed ex-slaves could live protected by the state from falling back into a slave status.
In the 19th and early 20th Centuries, it was legal to kill Native Americans. My Great Grandfather on my father's side of the family was killed coming home from work in Houston Texas around 1910. He was full blooded Cherokee. His crime? He had a job and the KKK did not want his kind in Houston. The KKK ran my father's family out of Texas. So it was foolish to admit that you were an Indian. It was better to say that your ancestry was from Africa than America. Eliza Thorne's education even as an ex-slave made it possible to live a better life than most freed people of her time.
In the 1970s and 1980s, I had the pleasure of walking around part of Eliza Thorne's land before it was finally sold off to developers around 1986.
David is tenth removed from Eliza Thorne
When I brought her oldest son back from swimming, Stephanie's one year old was crawling around the living room. He spotted Stephanie's smart phone on the end table and decided that he had to use it. He pulled himself up so that he could stand up to play with the phone. Stephanie keeps her phone locked so that he cannot just help himself. But surprise, it took him no time to unlock the phone. He proceeded to use it.
David as he showed me that he can operate a Smart Cell Phone
Just as he was about to make a phone call, Stephanie came into the room and snatched the phone from him. David started to cry because he had some serious business to conduct on her phone. So this song is for him. Place the link below in your browser and play.
http://www.myspace.com/louisarmstrong5/music/songs/nobody-knows-212168?ap=1
I am sure Eliza Thorne sung it when things went wrong and David has been wronged by Stephanie.
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