From : Gistreel Lifestyle. Liberia Online
She was eight years old when her father gambled her away in a card game.
Her older sister had three hours to win her back before the debt collector came.
Deadwood, Dakota Territory. 1877.
A place where law came slow, danger came fast, and survival belonged to the ruthless.
Thomas Garrett had lost everything—his mining stake, his wages, his self-respect—and now, in a drunken haze at the Gem Saloon, he’d lost something far worse:
his daughter.
The man who won her was Bullock—
not the sheriff, but a labor trafficker who “supplied” children to mining camps.
Kids as young as six spent twelve-hour days sorting ore until their lungs failed or their fingers gave out.
Most didn’t live past fourteen.
Thomas signed the paper without hesitation.
Bullock would collect little Emma at noon.
When fifteen-year-old Sarah came home from the laundry and learned what her father had done, she didn’t cry.
Didn’t scream.
Didn’t fall apart.
She simply asked, “When?”
“Tomorrow. Noon.”
Three hours until dawn.
Three hours to save her sister.
And Sarah had something her father never had:
clarity.
She knew Bullock.
Everyone did.
A cruel man who hid behind paperwork and respectability.
He’d made her father sign a contract—
which meant it could be challenged.
And Deadwood had something else:
A new federal judge who’d publicly declared that parents could not use their children to pay debts.
Sarah didn’t sleep.
She didn’t blink.
At dawn she was already standing in the courthouse, breathless, determined.
The clerk tried to dismiss her—
fifteen-year-old girls didn’t talk law.
But Sarah did.
Because before drink ruined him, her father had been a clerk…
and she’d read every law book he left lying around.
She laid out the case with the precision of a trained lawyer:
The contract violated territorial labor laws.
It constituted debt bondage of a minor.
Thomas Garrett was legally incapacitated due to intoxication.
The clerk stared. Then nodded.
He woke the judge.
Judge Isaac Parker—who would one day be known as the “Hanging Judge”—read the contract, listened to Sarah, and did something extraordinary:
He issued an emergency injunction, blocking the transfer and summoning both Bullock and Thomas Garrett to court that afternoon.
When Bullock arrived at the Garrett cabin at noon, two men at his back, he found Sarah waiting on the porch.
Not shaking.
Not pleading.
Holding a federal court order in her hand.
Bullock turned red with fury but wasn’t stupid enough to defy a judge.
At the hearing, Judge Parker didn’t hesitate.
He voided the contract.
Declared it an illegal attempt to traffic a minor.
Warned Bullock that any further attempt to collect “payment” would end with him in chains.
Then he turned to Thomas Garrett.
A father who gambled his children away forfeits the right to be a father.
Parker stripped him of parental rights and—
in a move that shocked the entire Dakota Territory—
appointed fifteen-year-old Sarah as her sister’s legal guardian.
But victory didn’t fill their stomachs.
Sarah now had an eight-year-old to raise,
no money,
no home,
and only her laundry work to survive.
What she did next became legend.
She went to five different businesswomen in Deadwood—
laundry owners, seamstresses, boarding house keepers—
and proposed a deal:
“I’ll work for reduced wages.
You house and feed my sister and me.
I’ll take the hardest jobs and the longest hours.”
Four said no.
The fifth—
a widow named Martha Bullock (no relation to the trafficker)—
said yes.
For the next three years, Sarah worked sixteen-hour days.
Emma went to school—
Sarah insisted on it.
She saved every coin.
By 1880, she’d saved enough to lease a small building and open her own laundry.
By 1882, she owned it.
She employed six women.
Paid fair wages.
Offered housing to those in need.
Emma, thirteen, kept the books.
When Emma turned eighteen, Sarah paid—
entirely from her business profits—
for her to attend normal school and become a teacher.
Emma later became a school principal
and one of the fiercest advocates for child labor reform in the state.
Sarah never married.
“I raised one child already,” she’d say with a half-smile.
“Did a better job than most with half the resources.”
She ran her business until 1910, providing work for over a hundred women across three decades.
Emma retired as the first female superintendent in her county.
When Sarah died in 1923, her obituary mentioned her “successful business career.”
Emma told the real story:
A fifteen-year-old girl who had three hours, a law book, and the unwavering conviction that her sister’s life was not for sale.
Judge Parker later said:
“Justice isn’t only about punishing the guilty.
Sometimes it’s about recognizing competence where no one else looks for it.”
The line between tragedy and triumph is thin.
Sometimes it’s nothing more than a teenage girl
who refuses to accept that her sister can be traded like poker chips—
and who’s smart enough to find the one legal lever that can stop it.
Sarah Garrett didn’t have money.
Didn’t have weapons.
Didn’t have allies.
She had time running out.
A mind trained by desperation.
And love hard enough to fight the world.
And that was enough.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=866624929388914&set=a.764395932945148&type=3&mibextid=wwXIfr
Peace LiLy 