After a life among pines, they laid you to rest on the back end of the cemetery in Waverly, Texas. Virginia-born, the Civil War wrested you from your Woodvale home, south of Richmond. You brought your journals with you and your longing to acquire knowledge. Through your journals, I know you. I've studied your what... Continue Reading →

To open her 1866 journal, Alice wrote seven quotations in Latin that are hard to decipher to my 21st century eyes. She wrote them in her most elegant script. Then, she signs her name: Alice M. Finch                 Va. And she quotes Lord Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” a lengthy narrative poem published between 1812 and 1818.*  “There... Continue Reading →