Anyone who has looked into Pinelands history, would have come across the name Doctor Still. He was an African American healer who practiced in the pines and left a long line and a large line of ancestors who celebrate his history to this day. I have been to lectures several times where his ancestors recount his life and adventures, and to one where historians described efforts to buy his property where he once lived and dispensed his herbal medicines to those in need.
An abiding interest of mine throughout my life has been the history of the forgotten, whether African Americans, the poor, Native Americans, or my own class of 'invisible people' - women. Often I have thought that if I had it to do over again, or more time in my life now, I would take up the study of Women's History, but all I can do is study it independently and I have throughout my life. In fact, I donated an extensive collection of books on that subject to the Alice Paul Foundation's Library at her farmstead in Mount Laurel.
In Prairie Fires, the biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder (author of the series - Little House on the Prairie) author Caroline Fraser includes many fascinating details of the historical context of Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood, including the land grab that destroyed the Native Americans of the plains. On page 56, she also describes an African American botanical herbal healer, George Tann, who saved her family when they were all sick with malaria, by treating them with quinine. This doctor, a self-taught son of free people, also treated the Osage Indians whose land was being stolen by the illegal settlement of pioneer families like the Ingalls in 1870's Kansas. This doctor, it seems to me is worthy, in his own right, of a biography, I wanted to know more about him.
Such is the colorful and scholarly prose of Caroline Fraser, that there are a constant succession of descriptive details that make this a page-turner, and inspire a longing to 'know more.' You can feel her passion for history in this writing and her broad understanding, as well as appreciate her lively prose style.
I would recommend this book to anyone who loves history and anyone who loved the Little House series, in book form or on tv. I never read the books myself, whether because I was older when they became popular, or whether they just never crossed my path, but one of my younger sisters was an avid and devoted fan of the tv series throughout her childhood and her adulthood. I bought the boxed set of the Little House books to read after I finish the biography.
Happy trails
Jo Ann
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