David Blight's A Slave No More
1619 — Approximately 20 captive Africans are sold into slavery in Jamestown, Virginia.
May 20, 1838 — John M. Washington is born in Fredericksburg, VA.
August 24, 1846 — Wallace Turnage is born in the Tyson Marsh district of Green County near Snow Hill, North Carolina.
1850—Washington is "left alone" when his mother and four siblings are hired out to Staunton in Western Virginia. He is 12 years old.
1857 — In the Dred Scott decision, the U.S. Supreme Court denies citizenship to all slaves, ex—slaves, and descendants of slaves.
Spring 1860 — Wallace Turnage is sold to Richmond slave trader Hector Davis. Davis soon sells Turnage for $1,000 to Scottish-born James Chalmers, a cotton planter from Alabama.
Fall 1860 —Turnage runs away for the first time.
November, 1860 — Abraham Lincoln is elected president. In December South Carolina secedes from the Union.
April 12, 1861 — Confederate troops open fire on Fort Sumpter and the Civil War begins.
Summer, 1861 —Turnage runs away a second time.
Late November, 1861 — Turnage escapes toward Mississippi, his third attempt.
January 3, 1862 — John Washington and Annie, a free black woman, are married.
1862— Washington is hired out to a hotel tavern called Shakespeare House in Fredericksburg.
April 6/7, 1862: The battle of Shiloh. More soldiers are killed than in all previous American wars combined.
April 18, 1862 — Yankee soldiers come to Fredericksberg and John Washington makes his escape: He, his cousin James, and another free man walk to the Rappahannock, where Yankee soldiers escort them to the north side and freedom. Washington is hired as a mess servant for the division commander General Rufus King.
Late August — October, 1862 — Wallace Turnage makes his fourth escape attempt. This time Chalmers takes Turnage to a slave trader in Mobile to be sold.
August, 1862—Washington learns of a $300 reward offered for his head. He takes formal leave of the army and leaves pregnant Annie in the care of women friends before traveling to the Sixth Street Wharf in Washington D.C.
September 1, 1862— Washington's grandmother Molly, his aunt Maria and her four children join him in D.C. All sleep on 14th Street.
September 22, 1862— Lincoln issues the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
October 6, 1862— Annie gives birth in Fredericksburg to William Herbert Washington. Soon after, they join John in D.C.
January 1, 1863 — President Lincoln issues the final Emancipation Proclamation freeing all slaves in territories held by Confederates.
November 19, 1863 — Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address.
1864 — John Washington first appears in a Washington city directory, his occupation listed as waiter. He lived just two blocks southwest of the White House. Later he would make his living as a house painter.
August, 1864— Turnage runs away for the fifth and final time, in what becomes a grueling journey through the swamps outside Mobile to reach the Union troops stationed at Fort Powell. Turnage serves as a cook for Lieutenant Juniors Thomas Turner.
March, 1865 — John Washington's second son John Burnside dies, three months before his first birthday.
April 15, 1865 — Lincoln dies.
September 7, 1865—Turnage was possibly present for the Maryland regiment's mustering out in Baltimore.
December 6, 1865 — The Thirteenth Amendment is ratified. Slavery is abolished.
January 12, 1866 — James Arthur Washington was born to John and Annie. Sons Charles and Benjamin would be born in 1870 and 1873.
January, 1870 — Wallace Turnage moves to New York City. He lived in rooms at 526 Broome Street, in the heart of what was then known as Little Africa, and worked as a waiter.
May 10, 1875 — Wallace marries Sarah Ann Elizabeth Bird. Their first two children were born in 1876 (Ida) and 1877 (Sarah). In 1879 they moved to Jersey City, where Wallace would spend the rest of his life.
1881 — Tennessee passes the first Jim Crow segregation laws. Over the next 15 years other Southern states follow.
1885 — The Statue of Liberty is assembled in New York Harbor. Wallace would have passed it as he rode the ferry to work as a watchman in a variety of Wall Street buildings.
1889 — Sarah Turnage dies at the age of 40, after giving birth to seven children, only three of whom survived to adulthood — Sarah, William (born 1881), and Lydia (born 1888). In November Wallace married Sarah Bohannah, at the Abyssinian Baptist Church near Washington Square.
1896 — The U.S. Supreme Court rules that "separate but equal" facilities for blacks and whites are legal in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision.
1900 — William Washington moves to Boston and becomes a tailor and a shipping clerk. His brother James, a railroad worker, moved to nearby Cohasset, where John and Annie moved when they retired.
1903 — Benjamin Washington received a Bachelor of Pedagogy from Howard University. He taught science and history at a D.C. high school for the next forty years.
1916 — Wallace Turnage dies. He is buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
1918 — John Washington dies. He is buried in Woodside Cemetery in Cohasset, Massachusetts.
1928 — William Turnage, Wallace's only surviving son, dies of cirrhosis. On his death certificate he was identified as white.
1930s — Lydia Turnage marries Thomas Connolly, the son of Irish immigrants, and moves to Greenwich, Connecticut, where he works as a hotel bellman. She too passes as white, describing herself as Portugee. She would keep her father's narrative her whole life, leaving it to her friend Gladys Watt when she died childless.
1970s — John's granddaughter Evelyn Washington Easterly comes into possession of John's narrative.