[lit-ideas] Re: Clearing Matters Up, with Whittier and Literature In

Someone asked me whether the Fritchies and the Ritchies are related. This was because Edna Watts Fritchie has an obituary in our local paper. Born In Hebron, Neb in 1913, Edna married Ben Fritchie on her fifteenth birthday. At time of death she had 15 grandchildren, 33 great-grandchildren and 25 great-great-grandchildren. I suppose she could be related to Barbara, who is supposed to have waved a union flag at Stonewall Jackson's troops--not true, btw; she was ill in bed at the time--and so made her way into Whittier's poem, which Churchill apparently knew by heart. The fact that the event didn't actually happen doesn't, of course, prevent there being a museum devoted to preserving its memory, also horse and motorcycle races named in her honor. "Golden Dawn" won the horse thing in 2008. I don't know who won the motorcycle race, but I'm assured by one website that it's an AMA national hot shoe event. 

No, I don't think we're related.

Carry on.

David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Fritchie
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