Lexi's Lettuce Work

Lettuce Bailey
by Alexis V.

Lettuce Bailey

Lettice Baily

Letice Baile

Lettuce Balye

Many names to one person.

Spelled many different ways.

Due to -

carelessness,

not paying attention.

unnecessary to spell correctly.

Yet,

so much is in a name.

Her Story

A mother.

To

Emma, Peleg, Sukey, Fredrick, Eli, and daughter “R”

A hard worker.

As a weaver,

spinning,

servant maid,

brought meat and hides to other households.

Daughter of Tamar.

Born 1765.

Married to Caesar Bailey.

“Freed” twice.

She was given land and a cow

Actually freed,

the day she died.

Child or Adult?

“So as long as she can and does maintain herself”

“she shall be free so long as she can and does maintain herself”

“Immensely stupid”,

Full grown adult,

treated as a child.

Not a life of her own.

She was treated like an animal.

Bound to Reverend Todd until death.

Reverend Todd is dead -

But is she really free?

Holes

There are holes in Lettuce’s story .

These holes make her story,

Lettuce’s story has as many holes as a loosely woven cloth.

We can’t come to find certain details of her life.

Lettuce being a slave,

Held people back from caring.

Leaving us to decide-

the correct spellings,

the correct version of the story.

Our story starts with,

Lettuce enslaved by Reverend Todd.

She got freed

Through his will.

She got married to Caesar Bailey.

Then somehow,

We are unsure how,

ended up at the Almshouse.

Where she was a servant maid

Died,

1820.

Holes.

Author Statement

My main intentions were to make Lettuce’s story known. I also wanted to show the carelessness she was treated with, using that first poem: “Lettuce Bailey”. I achieved my desired effect of wanting people to walk away understanding her story and what she went through. I achieved this by making poems focused on these topics, and weaving the topics throughout the poems. I hope people walk away noticing her story and noticing the horrible reality. I put historical knowledge into these poems by telling about Lettuce and stating facts about her and the story line throughout. I struggled with making my poems longer and bigger and more powerful. This was challenging because overall we didn’t have that much information to go off of.

Lexi's painting depicts the cow and property was supposed to have received in Rev. Todd's will.