Spent the day on campus, where I had a delightful meeting with a student. Also I met with a colleague. And then I graded stuff. After that I sat in the back of a classroom and listened to a presentation on digital marketing. And then we went to the big kids’ pool and I swam 2,000 yards, which was ragged and slow and will surely leave me sore tomorrow for reasons I won’t understand.

Now, I’m back to grading things.

Or I was.

Because now there’s this.

I’ve decided to release an album. The inspiration came on suddenly. Monday, tonight. Now I just have to write the music.

The good news is the art is already done. This may look like someone using a camera to try to look behind a heavy piece of furniture, but it’s really the cover.

And this, to the untrained eye, may look like a pocket photograph, but it is, in fact, the liner notes concept.

The art looks like a hasty independent release, meaning I need to come up with some sufficiently song titles. If only I knew anything about music, I could be on to something. But, alas and alack, I have no musical talent.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, where the historical markers search continues. This is the 52nd installment, and the 84th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series.

And today we’re learning about Hetty Saunders.

The last four years have been rough on that marker, done in a style which doesn’t hold up very well to the weather. It reads …

Esther “Hetty” Saunders was a remarkable woman of color who began her life in the early 1790s as a slave in Delaware. In 1800, her father saw an opportunity to escape to freedom with his children, crossing the Delaware River into Elsinboro, Salem County. Hetty was left in the care of Joseph and Ann Brick Hall, who were members of the Religious Society of Friends.

Saunders lived virtually her entire life in Elsinboro and Mannington, and would have remained anonymous if not for a collection of her poetry that survived after her death in 1862. Through this collection of poems, Saunders contributed to American literature and provided insights into 19th century African-American life in southern New Jersey. Hers is a voice rarely heard – that of a free woman of color in pre-Civil War America – and her poems provide glimpses of what her life was like and how she perceived and addressed inequities that surrounded her. Her works reveal an independent spirit, largely shielded by the outside, yet quietly prevailing over forces otherwise overwhelming.

The collection of poems written by Esther “Hetty” Saunders and related items are housed within the Salem County Historical Society archives. These materials and the publication I Love to Live Alone: The Poems of Esther “Hetty” Saunders (Donald L. Pierce, editor) are available to researchers at the Society’s library located at 83 Market Street in Salem. Esther “Hetty” Saunders was buried here in the Friends Burial Ground beside her friend Judy Wrying, who she wrote about in her best-known poem, “The Hill of Age.”

Come tell me ancient traveler
Whence thou did engage
How long its been since thou began
To climb the “hill of Age.”

Thou more than fourscore years hast seen
Yet thou art traveling still
I looked up when a little child,
And saw thee on the hill.

I gazed upon thee carelessly
For little then thought I
That I should ever be as old
Or have to climb as high.

Hetty Saunders’ gravesite at Salem Friends Burial Ground is on the New Jersey Women’s Heritage Trail because of the lasting contributions of poet Esther “Hetty” Saunders to the arts and culture in New Jersey.

Her dad brought Hetty and her brothers across the river and to freedom when she was just 7 years old. The modern telling has it that the Hall family convinced Saunders’ father to let her stay with them when he returned, and so she spent the rest of her 70 years with them or near them. She saved enough money to buy a bit of property from the Halls and she built herself a home.

Even as a free woman, it seems she had something of a life of isolation as a black woman in a community largely filled with white Quakers. So she turned to poetry. None were published in her lifetime, but the Hall family preserved the works. And, in 2001, a handful were published by the local historical society. She died in 1862, having apparently never married or having children. Her poetry, the web tells me, is now praised as a rare and remarkable literary legacy.

The next time we return to the marker series we’ll learn a bit about the cemetery where she was buried. If you have missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.