Sample From The Book "Family Chanes"

Eunice Barlow's Story - Chapter One

Perhaps I am not really much different from anyone else, but I do appreciate the fact that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth.

My family had a history of power, money and influence in Great Britain and was well known and revered in England and Scotland.

The Barlows were merchants well over 500 years and started by gaining favor from King Edward I and the Royal families to invest upon ships to travel to Africa, Asia and later to the New World.

At first, it was a family operation as they built up trust and equity with the wealthy families and the Royals. Upon gaining a measure of power and respect, most of the dirty work was given to the locals who wanted to earn a better living for their families.

We were accused of prostituting our souls for the money and power, yet at the same time praised for allowing many of the common men a chance to properly feed and clothe their families while others were starving.

I was born before the turn of the century in 1895 in the Scottish town of Irvine where my grandmother's family lived. My grandmother married into the wealthy Barlow family and stayed with my grandfather in Dover, England where they had a nice estate near the Strait of Dover off the English Channel.

My mother, Heather, who had just finished school, begged my grandfather to let her have a trip on board one of his voyages. She and a few of her friends, along with their female adult chaparones, were granted permission to take a trip on one of the luxury ships. The staff was given strict orders to go about their business and not to interact with the female guests aboard.

During one of the legs of the journey, a stop was made in Ghana which was one of the usual trading locations. In Ghana, which was a colony of Great Britain, there were many goods otherwise unavailable at home which would sell for good money.

My grandfather had an ongoing business deal with Kwaku Yakubu, a very intellegent business man with powerful African ancestors.

In his lineage, he was related to Yakubu I and all three of the Kwaku Dua men who were leaders of this nation. My family gained the respect of many in that area for refusal to participate in the slave trading. My great-great-great-grandfather made it clear the only intentions he had was to trade goods and not humans.

The Yakubu family had members in politics and others powerful in trade. Kwaku dealt mostly with his shares of land which produced bauxite, gold and diamonds. He also had land which farmed cocoa, tobacco, pineapples, avocados, and ginger. His workers produced a mean alcoholic ginger beverage which was also exported.

They left the ship and as a group and were invited to the mansion of Kwaku Yakubu. It was there my mother met a fine young man studying to become a doctor who was to be my father, Ashanti Yakubu.

As my parents became acquainted that evening, they fell madly in love. Mother told me it hurt her heart to leave him, but she always knew she would see him again. And she did.

Father used his connections through my grandfather to attend a medical school in England. While attending school, he became practically part of the family as a potential ally in Ghana to take over when his father retired from the business.

Unbeknownst to my grandparents, Father and Mother were falling deeply in love and planning on getting married. Mother became pregnant with me and the secret was out.

In order to prevent a disastrous business relationship nightmare, the situation had to be handled with kid gloves. They were disgusted at the fact that mother was pregnant without being married first and to an African man who was not a Christian. They thought about what this could do to the reputation of the family and found a solution.

They discussed the matter with Father to see what his intentions were with my mother. They wanted to know if this was a fling or if he truly loved her. When he said he loved her with all his heart, the answer was easy.

They told him they would have their blessing in a marriage on a few conditions: 1. He would become a Christian; 2. He arranged to make sure the business connections with his father remained secure; 3. He changed his name to something that sounded more British; and 4. He would lie to anyone who asked about the date of their marriage.

Father agreed and they were married in a secret ceremony then sent to my grandmother's hometown of Irvine where they were to tell everyone the story that they were married for 2 years and she was having a difficult pregnancy so they had to move to a quiet area. Father changed his official name to Robert Ashanti Barlow. He met all the conditions of my grandparents and was fully accepted into the family.

After I was born and a few months passed, we moved back to Dover and Father finished his schooling. Everyone there was told we were married in Scotland and I was born early.

Father finally became a doctor and was called upon by Mother's family to use his skill in order to secure connections in North America. He was employed by the charitable department of the Anglican Church and sent to Canada. We came along.

I was truly a daddy's girl. He loved me more than life itself. To me, he was like a god. So powerful, strong and caring. His heart was filled with love and charity. I could see that as he cared for the poor sick people who came to him for help.

Mother always seemed jealous of our bond, but I could tell she loved me, too. She understood her mother's need to control the image of her first love, but never accepted it. Behind closed doors, Father was always her African king, Ashanti. To her, my birth was proof of love to her man.

Covering up the facts hurt, but she understood why it had to be done. Not everyone in the world was as understanding as my family. That is what we discovered as Father was asked to help out in Georgia.

The missionary work in Canada was great. The people were mostly peace loving immigrants from the Caribbean islands who took little notice or said anything about the relationship between my parents. To be quite honest, I never really noticed that anyone could say there was anything wrong between my parents.

I was 12 years old when we traveled down to Georgia. I had finished school through the Anglican Church and was supposed to be shipped back to England before my 13th birthday to finish my education. This was my last chance to be with my family until I would be sent away for a long time.

Mother did not believe in sheltering me from the world. She wanted me to see that with wealth came great responsibility. People in our own country, in my father's country and in North America were not as well off as we were. She wanted me to appreciate the fact that we were rich and had the power so as to not gloat about it.

That is why I followed them for 10 years on this journey against the wishes of my grandmother who insisted on a proper education and upbringing for someone of my status.

I appreciate what Mother tried to do, but it back fired in the worst way possible. The trip to Georgia did not pan out as we had hoped.

Although slavery had been abolished for many decades, there were some people in the South who had a problem with anyone with dark skin. When we came through by carriage, a group of men on their horses were following us closely and made sure we were pushed off the road.

They saw something that so offended them which I could not comprehend - my white mother with my black father.

As Father stepped out of the carriage, the men approached him and ordered him to the ground. As Father spoke, they made fun of his accent and called him "an uppity nigger."

They ordered my mother and me out of the carriage and grabbed us to load us on the backs of their horses where we were taken to some remote area.

The men I was with went in a different direction from where my parents were going. I was afraid for my life and had no idea where they were taking me, what they would do and if I would ever see my parents again.

Those men called me a "mutt" who was dangerous since I looked white. They wanted to teach me a lesson about going around looking like a white woman who tempts the good white men, so those 8 men took turns and raped me. When they were finished, they would not give me back my clothes and put me on the back of a horse with this big man to go to my parents.

As we arrived at the destination, I could see a bunch of men dressed in white robes and hoods standing around a fire. From what I heard, these men were out for blood. One of those men had a young daughter who was caught having sex with a black man. They killed that man and wanted to teach the young lady a lesson that it was not acceptable to ever have sex with a black man.

Those horrid men marched me completely naked to the front of the circle to show her the product of a mixed marriage. Then they brought out my father who was not only naked, but bloody from all the lashes given to him. They held my mother, gagged her and forced her to watch as they ordered Father to have sex with me. They wanted proof that he ejaculated in me. If he didn't, they would kill all three of us.

Father did the hardest thing he ever had to do in his life. He loved me dearly and respected me. He also loved my mother and never wanted to do anything to hurt her. If he did this horrid act, he would disrespect me and hurt my mother. If he didn't, we would all die. So in front of the crowd, he had sex with me to show the young lady that "niggers sleep with their own children."

I was angry and felt violated, scared and embarrassed. What did we ever do to them to make them hate us so much? I never realized before that there was much of a difference between my dark skinned father and white mother. I never realized I was of any particular race and always considered myself a Brit. We were on a mission to help people and they just picked us as a random target. It could have been any other mixed couple who traveled through at that point, but it was us. To them, it didn't matter who they hurt.

They escorted us out of town and warned us never to return. Mother was outraged and insisted we call the local authorities. We sought the Sheriff who seemed disinterested in the case and claimed there was no way to prove it. He also gave us friendly advice to keep quiet about the matter. Such accusations often end up in death for the accusers.

We returned to Canada and explained the situation to the Deacon leader of the charity mission. The mission was over for us and we went back to Dover. We were told to never speak of the incident as it would be bad press.

There was a certain reminder of the incident I could not ignore. I was pregnant and it was only about a month before my 13th birthday. If I were to have the baby, the scandal would come out of the closet. My grandmother had a solution.

Contacting and paying a tidy sum of money for discretion, she found a doctor willing to perform a therapeutic abortion. Others were told I was simply having female problems. I was afraid and was haunted by memories of that day. I hoped my parents would be by my side, but Mother refused as she did not want to remember anything about that day.

Father disappointed me most. He promised he would be there for me. I guess he realized the child could have been his as well as any of those ruffians. It was more than he could take. Knowing he was forced to rape his daughter and the possibility of aborting his offspring. Or that his baby girl was carrying a baby of those white attackers and was unable to save her that horror. The day before I was to go to the doctor, Father was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head.

We all knew it was a suicide, but we covered it up by saying he was robbed and killed by an unknown attacker.

I was alone on the bed as they took out my dark skinned son. I cried harder than I ever did my whole life. I never believed I could ever feel such pain again. There was no one there to talk to and I had to pretend none of this happened for the good of our family name and connections.

I wasn't allowed much time to recover and had to push myself to make appearances that all was well, but I was weak and sick. It took many years to regain my health.

While I was finishing school, I took a trip to Paris from 1913 to 1918 with my friends to get away from a boyfried with whom I broke our engagement.

I caught my boyfriend hanging around my best friend a little too much and caught them kissing. When I confronted them, they swore nothing was going on. She was in a family way within a week and he refused to marry her. He claimed he still wanted me, but I didn't want him.

It was in Paris where I met a man named Claude Von Amburg. He was quite a handsome man, much older than me. He saw me and lavished his attention on me. He told me of his wealthy connections and invited me to his chateau overlooking the Seine River. I was flattered and fell in love with him.

In a romantic night of seduction, he proposed marriage to me and I accepted. Part of me accepted because he looked exactly like my father and I missed him greatly. Part of me accepted to hurt both my mother and former boyfriend who slept with my best friend.

I returned home to surprise Mother with the news I was married. Immediately, she disapproved and never really accepted nor trusted him. She said there was an air about him that felt dishonest. I thought she was just saying that to make me feel bad, but she was right.

He did everything he could to try to get his hands on my share of the family fortune, but it would not be fully mine for another 10 years. Once he realized this was not going to be an immediate get rich quick plan, he ran his usual con game on other women.

He would leave town on business for months at a time and I would wait for him at home. I was getting tired of waiting for him and started to engage in a secret affair with my former fiancé, John Todd. I felt guilty for cheating on Claude, but he rarely showed me any affection and when he did it was rough and he was drunk.

We were married for five years when I finally discovered the truth about him. A strange woman knocked on the door of my cottage where I was staying. She told me she was looking for Claude. I asked her what she wanted with my husband and she seemed shocked as she told me she was married to him.

I brought this to the attention of Mother who spared me the lecture that she was right and I was wrong. Using her connections, we were able to track down his activities during the last five years of marriage.

This man's name was really Lowell Bettencourt who was a former prisoner while living in the Ivory Coast. Due to threats on his life, he moved to France and posed as a wealthy man in order to con rich women out of their money. He was a bigamist and he was also infertile due to a case of syphilis which was treated many years ago.

When he returned home to me thinking I was none the wiser, he attempted his same brutish pattern and raped me while drunk. John came busting through the door and had it out with my fraud of a husband.

I was pregnant by John, but married to "Claude" and this would pose yet another crisis for mother to bury. Threatening my former husband with not only prison time, but to ship him back to his homeland where there is a price on his head was enough to get his co-operation.

He was to agree to grant me a divorce on the grounds he was cheating on me. My baby was to be certified as his. He was to never return to town again.

Months passed as the divorce was finalized and my daughter Gracie was born in 1923. She had the loveliest dark blue eyes and thick dark hair. She had features that resembled my father and some belonging to John. Although the official story was Claude was her father, I made it clear to her that John was her father in every manner that counted and to never speak of Claude again.

Want to know more? What happened to Eunice and Gracie? How did Gracie and other members of the Chanes family view life? How did their points of view affect the way they lived and others who lived with them? These questions and more will be answered in the book Family Chanes, coming soon.