Alec Turner was a masterful storyteller in the griot tradition of his Yoruba ancestors, and his daughter Daisy continued that tradition through an epic family saga spanning over 150 years. She told of Alec's father's enslavement and survival of the Middle Passage, Alec's birth into slavery and escape to join Union forces, and his arrival in Grafton in 1873 to raise a family with his wife Sally, a freed slave. At that time the Phelps Hotel, now the Grafton Inn, stood at the center of the town's social life and hosted notable guests and business travelers. Alec and Sally Turner performed there to raise money for the Baptist Church, singing slave songs and hymns, including Darling Nelly Gray, an anti-slavery ballad that Daisy remembered hearing from her parents. Music and singing remained a large part of the Turner family's life, and Daisy added her own family stories and vivid memories of life in Grafton and the Boston area to the ongoing saga.