A Slave - The Story of Sylvia Stark

Sylvia Stark was born slave in 1839 on a plantation in Missouri. As you know slaves weren’t allowed to know how to read or write or else that could help them escape to freedom. However, she learned to read and to write by listening and looking at young whites doing their lessons. In 1849 when Sylvia was 10, her father bought freedom for all of the family.  What a joy it would be to not have to work in the fields every day picking up plants and corn. What a joy it would be not getting whips on their backs. Two years later in 1851 the family moved to California and there she met a man named Louis Stark. They soon got married and got 2 children. Years later in 1860, when California introduced restrictions against black people, Sylvia, her husband and their two children flew to a new place called Saltspring Island. They lived in a farm and that’s where Sylvia got two more children. While Louis was running the farm Sylvia became a midwife volunteer and a nurse. Years later a family member received a dangerous sickness in those days called smallpox. The family member survived it but it got around the whole family like an epidemic. The Stark family survived it though. In the same year the Stark family moved to Nanaimo Area. Sylvia missed Saltspring too much that she returned there. She died there at the age of 106 in 1945. 106 was an old age to die at in the years of 1800. 

Sylvia Stark inspires me because she had a lot of courage taking care of her children when they were sick.  She also had enough courage to move from different places to make her and her family`s life better. I recommend this story of Sylvia Stark for people that like history and biography of people.