Frances Boyd Calhoun

A teacher who wrote for her father's newspaper published one book, and it outlived her by decades. Frances Boyd Calhoun's Miss Minerva and William Green Hill, a children's story about a spindly old maid, her suitor the Major, a Confederate veteran, and her nephew Billy, appeared in 1909, months before she died, and went through more than fifty editions. Its Black characters speak in dialect. Emma Speed Sampson continued the series with Billy and the Major in 1918. Calhoun was also a chapter president in the Daughters of the Confederacy.

What the plaque says

Frances Boyd Calhoun The author of "Miss Minerva and William Green Hill," is buried ½ mi. southwest of here in Munford Cemetery. Born in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, Dec. 23, 1867, she moved to Covington in 1880. She married George Barret Calhoun in 1903. Her well-known book for children was published only a few months before her death in June, 1909.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Alex Haley House Museum — 8.5 mi
  The 1919 bungalow in Henning where Alex Haley heard the family stories behind Roots, now a state historic site and museum with his grave in the front yard.
• Fort Pillow State Historic Park — 12 mi
  A National Historic Landmark on the Chickasaw Bluffs where, on April 12, 1864, Confederate troops massacred Black Union soldiers who were trying to surrender.
• Hampson Archeological Museum State Park — 22 mi
  A free state museum on the town square in Wilson that holds the Nodena collection, one of the best Late Mississippian pottery collections known, from a palisaded village on the Mississippi occupied from A.D. 1400 to 1650.
• Tina Turner Museum at Flagg Grove School — 22 mi
  The one-room Black school Tina Turner attended in Nutbush, moved to Brownsville in 2012 and opened as a museum in 2014 beside Sleepy John Estes's house.

More markers nearby

• Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox — 0.3 mi
• Charles B. Simonton — 0.4 mi
• Randolph — 12 mi
• Hurst's Raid at Barretville — 15 mi