The Black History Month display at Logan County Public Library is entitled “Black Resistance.” It is presented by minister Tammra Turner of Bowling Green and author John F. Baker Jr. of Springfield.
See a Guest Article by Katherine Hart, who coordinates Logan County Black History Month outreach, on The LoJo. In it, she explains why three great Americans are featured in the display and what they signify.
The following information is taken from autobiographical information submitted by John Baker and Tammra Turner.
John Baker
Genealogy Expert John F. Baker Jr. was born in 1962 in Springfield, Tenn. and has lived his entire life just a few miles from Wessyngton Plantation, in a town populated by hundreds of descendants of its slaves.
In seventh grade, he discovered the story of his ancestors by accident when he saw a photograph of four former slaves in a social studies textbook. Months later, he learned that they were his grandmother’s paternal grandparents, Emanuel and Henny Washington, who were once enslaved on Wessyngton Plantation. Wessyngton Plantation was founded by Joseph Washington, a distant cousin of President George Washington in 1796.
For more than twenty years, Baker conducted genealogical research on Wessyngton families along traditional lines. In 2003, he incorporated DNA testing to expand his research and founded the Wessyngton DNA Project.
The Wessyngton DNA Project included descendants of enslaved families from Wessyngton Plantation from 1796-1865 and descendants of the plantation owner.
In 1964, the Washington family deposited the plantation’s records in the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville. These papers are remarkable in their content and include birth registers of slaves from 1795-1860, slave bills of sale, letters, diaries, lists of slaves in the Union Army, food and clothing allocations, inventories, tax records listing the names of slaves and much more.
These records, known as the Washington Family Papers, have been Baker’s primary source of research. He has viewed more than 11,000 documents countless times to unravel his ancestry and the other Wessyngton families. John also used public records such as wills, deeds, census records, marriage records, court records, and death certificates, to research the genealogies of Wessyngton families.
In addition to collecting information from his own family members, he has interviewed more than twenty-five children and grandchildren of former Wessyngton slaves (ranging in age from 80 to 107). They shared many first-hand accounts of life on the plantation told by their ancestors who were enslaved there.
Research on the Wessyngton families has yielded hundreds of photographs and portraits of African Americans who were once enslaved on the plantation. The Washington family commissioned portraits of several former slaves at the end of the nineteenth century. Portraits by the famous artist Maria Howard Weeden, who specialized in painting African Americans, hung in prominent places in the Wessyngton mansion.
When the Washington family sold Wessyngton Plantation in 1983, it was the largest farm in America owned by direct descendants of the original founder. Wessyngton Plantation, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is a working farm. The mansion, built brick by brick by its slaves, still stands as does a slave cabin and its slave cemetery.
Through extensive historical research, Baker has managed to create groundbreaking research in African American history and American history. He uses historical records to trace genealogy such as slave bills of sale, Freedmen’s Bureau records, church records, death records, birth records, marriage records, U. S. Census records, military records, pension records, Civil War records, wills, deeds, Estate records, plantation records and many others.
Baker has interviewed dozens of individuals ranging in age from 80 to 107 years old to collect their oral histories. He used more than 11,000 documents to trace the lives of his ancestors, the Washington family and more than 300 other African Americans enslaved on Wessyngton Plantation, which was the largest tobacco plantation in America.
In 2014 Baker served as a consultant to curators of the Tennessee State Museum for an exhibit called Slaves and Slaveholders of Wessyngton Plantation. The exhibit showed how Wessyngton Plantation developed from a small farm to the largest tobacco plantation in America as well as the relationships between the slave owners and the enslaved. The exhibit was based on Baker's book and research and attracted more than 70,000 visitors.
A documentary Wessyngton Plantation: A Family's Road to Freedom was developed for the exhibit and has been shown all over the country. Baker also served as consultant for the film.
In 2015 Baker organized a dedication ceremony at the African American Cemetery on Wessyngton Plantation. More than 200 descendants of of slave owners and the enslaved of the plantation attended. Descendants of the slave owners donated funds to erect a monument in the cemetery with the names of 450 individuals enslaved on the plantation from 1796-1865.
Today hundreds of Wessyngton descendants throughout the country visit the plantation to learn more about the lives of their ancestors.
Research into his family’s past has been a groundbreaking work of history and a deeply personal journey of discovery. The Washingtons of Wessyngton Plantation is an uplifting story of survival and family; it honors the memory of our ancestors, their struggles and their achievements.
John Baker will be a Black History Month guest on WRUS Radio’s Feedback program on Wednesday, Feb. 15, and his book is available for checkout in the Logan County Public Library.
Tammra Turner
Minister Turner is the wife of Pastor James Turner. She is the mother of four children, the grandmother of eight, the godmother of two, and the owner and operator of Designs by Tammra since 2002. She spent a lot of time with her grandmother, Josephine Woodard, growing up, and she was the one who taught her to be faithful to God. It is the memories that motivated her when God called her to preach.
In 2018 she was licensed to preach the Gospel and in 2019 ordained to preach the Gospel at State Street Baptist Church, in Bowling Green. An active participant in the ministry, she has served as a teacher and Dean of Education at Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church; president of Circle 5 Missionary and Congress Historian in First District, and President of Minister Wives Council in Union District of General Association of Baptists in Kentucky; director of Education and Vice President of Women’s Ministry at Christ Worship Center in White House, Tenn.; South Central Region President and Fourth Vice President in the Baptist Women’s Missionary Convention under the leadership of President Agnew Radford.
She received an Associate of Arts (2007) and a Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies (2013) with focus in Social and Behavioral Science and currently is pursuing her Masters in Organizational Leadership at Western Kentucky University.
In 2018 Minister Turner started a non-profit organization called Grace 2 Grace where she assisted with after-school program for underprivileged children and volunteered at Bowling Green Towers by teaching, cooking, visiting the sick and those suffering with depression.
The name of the non-profit was recently changed to Turner-N-Turner Inc. This organization is now focused on delivering the Word of God online to offer hope and encouragement to everyone. The pandemic has touched everyone around the world, and this is their way of fiving hope to the community, sharing the love of God along with the hope of Salvation for Eternity through Jesus Christ.
She is a licensed cosmetologist in Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama. Tammra is owner and operator of her own salon in Bowling Green.
Minister Turner loves reading and spending time with her children, grandchildren and goddaughters. She loves the Lord and prays that she has said or done something to make the lives of others brighter and full of hope.