Chapter 1: Roots in the Soil – Carolyn’s Early Life in Rural Maine (1871–1888)

The first cries of Carolyn French pierced the crisp March air of Rome, Maine, in 1871, a sound swallowed by the vastness of Kennebec County’s forests. Her parents, Joanna Stevens and Albert W. French, were no strangers to hardship—the kind etched into the calloused hands of farmers across post-war America. The land they tended was unforgiving, its rocky soil demanding dawn-to-dusk labor, but it was also a giver of life: the scent of turned earth in spring, the golden haze of barley fields at harvest.