Free Woman or Slave: The Story of Sally Miller

Synopsis: In April 1818, two little orphan girls, five-year-old Salomé Müller and her eight-year-old sister, Dorothea disappeared. They had been on their way up the Mississippi to a plantation many miles from New Orleans. In the years that followed, members of their extended family and family friends searched for them, but to no avail.

Twenty-five years later, Madame Karl Rouff stumbled upon a young slave woman in a coffee shop, who she was convinced was the long-lost Salomé. Madame Karl may have been the daughter of Salomé's Aunt Margaret, or she may simply have been a girl who lived on the same ship during the Müller family's stay in Amsterdam and the subsequent Atlantic crossing. Whatever her relationship to Salomé and her family, Madam Karl knew the family and was astounded at how much the slave woman resembled the mother (a woman who had died many years earlier) of the lost girls.

Autobiography: Rose Suemoto is a freelance writer who loves history. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Secondary Education from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. She retired after a long career as a corporate and technical writer in the healthcare industry. She lives with her husband in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, where she has facilitated a memoir writing group for senior citizens, has coached a middle-school speech team, and has been involved with Toastmasters clubs.