ruffner. she was a yankee lady. she was a second wife. she really likes booker. he really can do no wrong. he is hard-working, he is always asking her, how am i getting along? am i doing well? he was honest, he was hard-working, and he was very bright. i think she appreciated his talents. i think she did something for him that gave him self-confidence that carried through his career because his career was in dark hours. he was able to see himself in her eyes reflected as a perfect being. he was here until he was hampton, and he went to to school for three years. he would go during school term and come back in the summers. the second summer he came back, his mother passed away suddenly and it was really a hard time for him. and he credits misses ruffner for being his friend and helping him get back to hampton for his third year. when he graduates from hampton, he is the top student in his class, and he comes back here to teach school. and he says his favorite years of his life is when he came b

she gets the job first as a chambermaid for the ruffners and then as a cook. she gets them to hire booker as a garden and house boy, knowing that he would learn social graces, he'd have their big library available to him, that he wouldville have a lot of opportunities that -- he would have a lot of opportunities that he otherwise wouldn't have. as an important part of him being with the ruffners is he developed a familiar al relationship with -- fameni al relationship with the second wife -- familial relationship with the second wife. they really got on. he always asked her, am i doing well? he was honest, he was hard working and he was very bright. and i think she appreciated his talent. and i think that she did something for him that gave him a self-confidence that probably carried him through his career. because his career was full of crisis and dark hours. but he was able to see himself in her eyes, reflected as a perfect being. he was here until he was about 15 and he went to hampton to school for three years. he would go during school term and then come

the ruffner family, the dickinsons, really started to grow this industry. it was an industry that grew on the backs of slaves. the valley was one of the largest industrial slave systems -- slave uses in the country, like many other industries. 500 slaves inr the valley and 250 on the property alone. by the 1840s we were the largest salt making region of the country. most of the salt was leaving and going to cincinnati, also called the hoglis because of farming. once the meatpacking industry started growing up in chicago, the market in cincinnati started to wane. it started to go away. the dickinson family made salt until 1945, and we revived the business in 2013. and thep in the valley salt industry which is not something that was shared. i vaguely knew that we made salt and then i began digging into the family history when i was in my and at the same time filling 40's up my pantry at home with salt because it was so fascinating, different salts from around the world. and it was an aha moment. we decided to revive the salt industry because several key point