The Homecoming of Julieanne's Daughters

In those dark days after the War the resettling of the people of the South was the most important business at hand.

The laws that kept slaves from learning to read were finally struck down. The hunger for education was at a fever pitch. The white missionaries, abolitionists, and good-hearted white sympathizers could not fulfill the need for teachers fast enough. There were many educated free people of color living north, and in some cases even within the battered southern states.

Mrs. Julieanne, affectionately known as "ma'am", had four lovely daughters that mysteriously disappeared from Humboldt, Tennessee shortly after the War, and were presumed to have died.

Although the laws giving freedom to black slaves were loosely in place, they still suffered hostilities from angry whites and the newly formed Ku Klux Klan.

Miraculously, one day the four sisters who were said to be "too pretty to live" appeared as schoolmarms dressed in northern attire, somewhat bedraggled from their trip across the Appalachian Mountains.

They now stand before a ragged crowd of familiar black and white faces, bewildered and somewhat stunned by their appearance. Their teamster driver, who preferred to be called "mister", though she appeared as a wonderfully built "missus" stood silently cradling her war carbine across her full bosoms. The sisters received a somewhat grudging display of greetings as the mixed crowd strained to murmur, "Welcome home ladies."