Edith turner biography
Edith Turner
Leader of the Nottoway (c. –)
For the English-American anthropologist, poet, and educator, see Edith Turner (anthropologist).
Edith Turner (ca. – February or March ), sometimes known as Edy Turner or Edie Turner, or by her personal name Wané Roonseraw, was a leader – often styled "chief" or "queen"[1] – among the Nottoway people of Virginia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Life
Turner lived in Southampton County, Virginia, and had been active in land transactions since ,[2] although her name first appears on a petition to the Virginia General Assembly dating to , marking her earliest appearance in the historical record.[3] She married one William Green, who appears to have been a non-Indian,[3] in [4] A tribal census of listed her employments as "knitting, sewing, and what is usual in common housewifery", and stated that she had two black workers hired for her by white trustees.[4] She is said to have been intelligent, thought not highly educated, and a fluent and skilled conversationalist in both English and Nottoway.[1] Little else of her personal life is recorded, and it is not known if she had children, or if she had been married to anyone other than Green.[3] She owned a prosperous farm, and as a leader among her people attempted to convince them to adopt the farming practices used by whites. At the time many refused to participate in intensive farming, and as a result they were forced to sell off reservation land to pay debts; she attempted to divide tracts among individuals instead of treating them collectively.[2] To that end, on October 27, Turner, acting in her role as chief, petitioned the Virginia General Assembly to parcel out the remaining portion of the reservation among individual residents.[1]
Turner was also active as a foster mother and advocate for Nottoway children, successfully petitioning white trustees to return four to the reservation.[2] She is known to have met Jedidiah Morse in as he traveled the United States studying Indians at the President's request; he described her as the "reigning Queen" of the tribe and praised her intelligence and business sense.[3] She is also remembered as one of the last three speakers[5] of the Nottoway language, which became extinct sometime before [6] A wordlist which she provided to surveyor John Wood in found its way to Thomas Jefferson, who shared it with Peter Stephen Du Ponceau; it is one of the best surviving sources of information about the language.[7] She knew the tribe's legends, and provided an account of one of them to an anonymous writer who submitted it to The Gentleman's Magazine of London, which published it in [5] She taught children Nottoway traditions, as well as how to exist in a white-dominated society. She was also the only member of the tribe, at the time, to write a will,[2] a brief document which makes no mention of relatives and which leaves the bulk of the estate to one Edwin Turner, whose relationship to her is unknown.[3] At least one later chief of the tribe, Walter David "Red Hawk" Brown III, is descended from one of her foster children.[8]
Turner was named one of the Library of Virginia's Virginia Women in History for [2]