Ursula Granger: An American Founding Storyteller and Her Stories

A Fellow's Forum with Sheila Arnold
Join us, Tuesday, January 21, 2025 at 4pm ET for a fellow's forum with master storyteller Sheila Arnold.
 
Held in the Howard and Abby Milstein Theater of the David M. Rubenstein Visitor Center at Monticello, the presentation will begin at 4pm. The forum will last one hour and include an opportunity for questions and discussion.

About the Presentation

The enslaved maidservant, cook and laundress, was also a storyteller.   Her Stories were told to the young ones around her - both African American and white.  She must have told stories well, because they were remembered and recounted.  One particular remembered story, "Mammy Dinah and Her Three Dogs" is of much interest to me as a Professional Storyteller and Historian.  I was shown a recounting of this story in 2023, and was stunned to know this was told in the late 1700's and early 1800's.  Creole, Gullah and rural North Carolina versions of this story are widely known amongst African American storytellers, but the earliest known versions are from the late 1800's.  Ursula's telling of this story was almost 100 years prior to known versions!  I want to trace Ursula's stories - looking at her version's connections to Virginia plantation lifestyle and research how the story was transmitted to locations far from the Virginia mountains.  I want to honor Ursula as an American Founding Storyteller, creator of a widely told African American story, and provide evidence needed for this to be added to 18th-century storytelling programs. 
 

About Sheila Arnold

Sheila Arnold (www.mssheila.org) has been performing since she was 8 years old.  She currently lives in Hampton, VA and presents Storytelling Programs, Historic Character Presentations, Christian Monologues, Professional Development for Educators and Inspirational/Motivational Speaking for schools, churches and organizations throughout the US.  She also performs in, manages and contracts new business for History's Alive!, which mentors and provides employment opportunities and guidance to other performers.  Ms. Sheila, as she is fondly called, has been performing full-time since 2003, and goes to over 150 different venues a year.  Sheila has been sought after by museums and exhibition designers to turn historical documentation into stories which can be animated and/or dramatized.  She has worked with Northern Lights, Inc. on the new James Madison's Montpelier Mansion African-American exhibit, and, with Richard Lewis Media Group and the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad.  Ms. Sheila, as she is often called, also is actively commissioned by communities to create and tell their stories in an effort to promote community unity.  She has been recently highly recognized for her Scarboro 85 Desegregation Story (Oak Ridge, TN) and the United States Colored Troops (Franklin, VA).  Sheila is fortunate to live close to her son, Krisstopher, her grandsons, Brooklyn & KJ, and her father and stepmother, Wallace & Vera Arnold, and communicates often with her Charlotte-based sister, Stephanie Arnold.

ADDRESS:
931 Thomas Jefferson Parkway
Charlottesville, VA 22902
GENERAL INFORMATION:
(434) 984-9800