They said I would never marry. In four years, twelve men looked at my wheelchair and left. But what happened next surprised everyone, including me.
My name is Elellanar Whitmore, and this is the story of how society rejected me and how I found a love so powerful it changed history.
Virginia, 1856. I was 22 years old and considered a lost cause. My legs had been useless since I was eight. A horseback riding accident shattered my spine and trapped me in that mahogany wheelchair my father had commissioned.
But no one understood. It wasn’t the wheelchair that prevented me from getting married. It was I who was the burden. A woman who couldn’t accompany her husband to parties. A person who supposedly couldn’t have children, couldn’t run a household, couldn’t fulfill any of the responsibilities expected of a Southern wife.
Twelve arranged marriage proposals from my father. Twelve rejections, each crueler than the last.
“She can’t walk down the aisle.” “My children need a mother to chase them.” “What’s the point if she can’t have children?” This last rumor, completely false, spread like wildfire through Virginia society. The doctor began speculating about my fertility without even examining me. Suddenly, I was not only disabled but deficient in every way that mattered to America in 1856.
When William Foster, a fat, drunken fifty-year-old, rejected me despite my father offering him a third of our annual inheritance, I knew the truth. I would die alone.
But my father had other plans. Plans so radical, so shocking, so completely at odds with all social norms, that when he told me about them, I was sure I’d misunderstood him.
“I recommend Josiah to you,” she said. “The blacksmith. He will be your husband.”
I stared at my father, Colonel Richard Whitmore, owner of 5,000 acres of land and 200 slaves, certain he had lost his mind.
“Josiah,” I whispered. “Father, Josiah is a slave.”
“Yes, I know exactly what I’m doing.”
