Chapters 5-6 Summary and Analysis

The Jenkins were a slave family that migrated to Nova Scotia with their owners. When their master-servant relationship ended, their son Frederick moved to Roxbury for employment. He married and had a daughter Helen. At this time, a young black girl named Fanny, was kidnapped, taken to Augusta, Georgia and sold to the Greshams. She eventually married Jack Bennefield. They were freed after the Civil War and remained working for the Greshams for pay. They had a daughter Cornelia who married Frederick Walker and had nine Children. Their third oldest daughter, Fanny, migrated to Boston in 1923. Her brother Thomas Quinnie married Helen Jenkins and they had a daughter named Rachel, along with seven other children. They settled in Lower Roxbury.

The marriage of Helen and Quinnie slowly deteriorated. The family knew Quinnie had many women. Rachel was very rebellious...