Lucy Virginia Smith French

French left more than poetry. She kept diaries through the Civil War, now held at the Tennessee State Library and Archives, with detailed accounts of her family's wartime experiences at their McMinnville plantation and at Beersheba Springs, where they lived during 1863 and 1864. By then she was an editor as well as a poet. She had led the Southern Ladies Book from 1852 and later edited the Southern Homestead, the Rural Sun, the Sunny South and the Southern Literary Messenger. Her best-known poems include "Tecumseh's Foot" and "The Great River."

What the plaque says

Lucy Virginia Smith French Poet and author, born 1825 in Accomac County, Va. Moved to Memphis ca. 1845, where she taught school and published poetry under the pseudonym "L'Inconnue". Editor of several Southern literary magazines; married John French in 1853; moved to his McMinnville residence, "Forest Home". Published several volumes of prose and poetry including, Wind Whispers, 1856; Legends of the South, 1867; and Darlingtonia, 1879. Died 1881, buried Riverside Cemetery.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rock Island State Park — 12 mi
  A park where the Collins, Rocky and Caney Fork rivers meet at the head of Center Hill Lake, with a gorge of waterfalls below a 1917 dam and the remains of a cotton-mill town.
• Savage Gulf State Park — 18 mi
  Roughly 19,000 acres of gorge and sandstone bluff on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, a state park of its own since 2022, with the Stone Door and a National Natural Landmark.
• Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park — 23 mi
  A 2,000-year-old enclosure of piled stone and earth on the bluffs above the forks of the Duck River, built by Native people between about 80 and 550 A.D., with a museum and waterfall trails.
• Fall Creek Falls State Park — 25 mi
  A New Deal park on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, where Cane Creek has cut a gorge and a 256-foot waterfall drops into it.

More markers nearby

• Morgan's Headquarters — 1.2 mi
• Anthia Brady Hughes 1868-1949 Willie Huges 1895-1986 — 1.5 mi
• Carl T. Rowan — 1.5 mi
• Bernard School — 1.6 mi