We Call Our Daddy Mister - In Defiance of Convention - Life & Times at the Rose Hill Plantation

We Call Our Daddy "Mister" chronicles the story of Burrell Harrell, the son of a Confederate soldier. Harrell refused to abide by the customs and traditions of the Stars and Bars. He took up with a mulatto woman who bore him nine white children, five boys and four girls. They lived as a family in Georgia, contrary to custom and law. Harrell took on all comers to safeguard his children. His children were not accepted as white; they lived a difficult life being neither white nor black, but were conditioned culturally as black.

"Mister Burrell" loved his family but toward the end of his life, he willed all of his belongings to a nephew - the son of a profligate brother - leaving his family without land or legal means to prosper. The holdings of Mister Burrell were about 2000 acres, 500 hundred head of cattle, and a whole creek.

Probate of the will disclosed the probability of second, more recent will, allowing his heirs and Harrell's children to challenge the first will. Though the challenges were successfully fought off by the nephew, he lived in fear of having to give up land.

Two of Burrell's daughters, 86 and 78 years old in 2006, still live on land previously owned by their Daddy. These very lands were recently bought by the State of Georgia and leased to the KIA Corporation of Korea to manufacture automobiles. The state paid Burrell Harrell $145.00 an acre in 1965; today the same land is valued at $12,500 per acre. They hope to be compensated eventually.