The 15th Star (A Lisa Grace History - Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page A

helped to shape our country wouldn ’t be as boring as Keiko had feared. Keiko carefully removed the letter from the envelope.
    The first letter was from a Grace Wisher.
     
    May 17, 1818
    Dearest Louisa,
    I count you as a true and dearest friend, I be getting long, though I miss yous. I misses what could never be. I knowd he better off where he is. Buts I miss part of my heart. It be wid him. Longs I see him in heaven some day. I wonder if he will no me. Please writ me soon. I learn better from your letters. Sen me word. I pray happiness for him. No one no. thank ye again and God bless. You an angel on erth.
    Grace Wisher
     
    Wow. Highly unusual. Someone not educated writing to Louisa, and calling her a friend? Writing about a dead or missing son, husband, lover? Possibly a young soldier who was under her husband George’s command? Keiko again went back to the museum website and ran the name, Grace Wisher. Keiko’s memory was correct. Grace Wisher was the African-American indentured girl who worked for Mary Pickersgill. This was very interesting, an indentured servant, a friend of someone in high social circles like Louisa. Highly unusual and interesting. Maybe there would be mention of the flag in some of the other letters. Grace had worked on the flag along side Caroline who was Mary’s daughter, and two of Mary’s nieces, Eliza and Jane Young. It took the five of them six weeks to sew the flag. Keiko would keep searching for any mention of their time with the flag. This search was going to be fun. Little was known about Grace as slavery was still in practice in Maryland during the 1818 time period. Emancipation would not happen in that part of the country for about another thirty years. In the history books, Grace was called an indentured servant, but was that a formality on Mary Pickersgill’s part?
    The letter was about Grace being torn apart from someone she loved. Unfortunately, in 1818 for a slave, or indentured servant, involuntary separation would not have been uncommon. Keiko logged the names and dates on her laptop then put the letter on the scanner. She hit save and burned the information to a thumb drive on her computer. Keiko then sent the information by email to the Smithsonian ’s backup site. This way if the redundancy of the stored files on her laptop were lost, there was still a backup kept at a third party online records storage company, plus the copy on her thumb drive. It never hurt to be too careful. As an undergrad she had learned the importance of backing up files when her laptop had quit halfway through a term paper. Explaining to the professor and then recreating all the lost work had been a nightmare. Thank God she’d kept paper notes to help her reconstruct her lost work. That was the year of nightmares. Her parents…forever gone. Now was not the time to think about it. She shoved the painful memory back into her mental archives. She wasn’t going to think about it. Not today, not now.
    Keiko got up, stretched her legs, and looked at the clock. 8:00 a.m. The rest of the department should be drifting in. She picked up her mug and walked into the hallway which led down to Dr. Writer ’s office to make a pot of coffee. The good doctor’s real name was Writer, and he’d heard every lame attempt of a joke in the department. He was a jovial history buff and the President of a local reenactment group. His office was twice the size of most of the offices, which gave him the honor of holding the department coffeepot. Most of the old offices only had two power outlets and would easily overload. Doc’s office had the luxury of eight and he kindly shared his extra outlets for the coffeepot, a microwave, and small fridge for the brown baggers.
    As Keiko entered the hall she saw Julian. His back faced her as he walked away from her towards his office. You could hardly tell he was missing a leg at all. The way he walked had a fluidity to it that was all his own. Keiko found her rhythm as she