This summer,  I hope to be with my friends as much as I can! Like going swimming, or lying out in the sun, and staying up all night. I hope it’ll be fun and exciting and will last for what seems forever. (= Basically it’s Brittany, Ashley Adkins, Myla and I (BAMK) hanging out and we do the funnest things. This summer I hope all of our friends can be together; Ashley Ripplinger, Jessi, Courtney, Logan, Tristan, Paul, Justin, Evan and Kevin. Plus BAMK! (= I hope we’ll meet new friends, also and make even for fun memories. I have a feeling this could be the best one yet.

   If I could descibe this school year in one word- I couldn’t. This year has been fun, weird, sad, bad, happy, crazy and everything in between! All my best friends now are the ones I met this year. I’m glad I was in this class or I wouldn’t have met Myla, Courtney, Ashley Ripplinger, Ashley Adkins, Tristan, Logan, and Toni. If I didn’t meet them I wouldn’t be friends with Evan, Jeffrey,  Paul, Justin, Jorge, and Mr. Cosand!
   This year has been soo fun! We’ve made so many memories and had such great times. It was fun to get to know Mr. Cosand! He is a very fun and funny teacher. I will be sad when this year ends. It’s probably been the best year yet! (=

So much depends
upon

A dinging wind
chime

Ding, ding, ring
ting

Swaying and gliding
wind

Blows a soft
chime

A tinging wind
chime

Ellen Craft was born around the year of 1826 in Clinton, Georgia. Her mother’s named was Maria who was an enslaved woman also. Her father was her mother’s slave owner, Major James Smith. Ellen was light-skinned and often people thought she was in her owner/father’s family.

When she was eleven years old she was moved away from the house in Clinton and taken to Macon, Georgia. She was taken to be a wedding gift for a daughter of the Smiths. When she got to Macon she met William who soon she would marry.

In 1846 Ellen and William got married. Two years later in 1848, Ellen and William attempted to escape slavery. Ellen was a very light-skinned woman and was able to dress as a southern male slave owner with short hair, a top hat, and trousers. William, a darker-skinned man dressed as Ellen’s valet.

Ellen and William successfully got to Savannah by train. They got on a steamship taking them to Charleston, South Carolina. Then they got on another steamship to Wilmington, North Carolina. They boarded a train to just outside Fredericksburg, Virginia. Next they got on yet another steamship to Washington, D.C. They went on to Baltimore, Maryland by train. They went across the Mason-Dixon line into Pennsylvania. Their escape had times where it was almost shattered…but finally they made it to Philadelphia on a Christmas Sunday.

Only staying for a little while in Philadelphia, the Crafts moved to Boston. Before leaving Boston they were married in a sanctioned church. December of 1850, the Crafts moved to Liverpool, London. They lived in Liverpool for three years while going to Ockham School in Surrey. Then they settled in West London when their family of five children began to form. Charles Estlin Phillips, William, Brougham, Alfred, and Ellen were the names of their children.

They lived nineteen years in all in London. The Crafts lived an adventurous life; living in slavery, escaping slavery, moving from country to country, raising five children, building education, running a boarding house, and William making commercial and mercantile agreements in West Africa.

In 1870 Ellen and William moved back to Georgia. They lived right outside of Savannah in Bryan County. They bought hundreds and hundreds of acres of land but soon the Crafts began to struggle greatly financially. In 1890 the Crafts moved to Charleston to live with their daughter’s family.

In 1891 Ellen Craft died while living with their daughters in Charleston. She was buried under her favorite tree in her plantation in Georgia. William died nine years later in 1900

Sterling, Dorothy. Black Foremothers Three Lives. 2nd Edition. New York, NY: The Feminist Press at The University of New York, 1988. Print.

“Ellen Craft.” Wikipedia.com. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., n.d. . Web. 31 Mar. 2010. .

“Ellen Craft.” Answers.com. Answers Corporation, n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2010. .

“William and Ellen Craft (1824-1900; 1826-1891).” www.georgiaencyclopedia.org. University of Georgia Press, n.d. Web. 5 Apr. 2010. .