William Buchanan Conway of Madison County, Virginia, and Julia Ellen Thomas, of Blacksburg, Virginia, were total strangers in the fall of 1869, when their correspondence began. Some mutual friends of theirs may have discerned a potential compatibility between the two and subsequently prompted the initiation of William and Julia's communication. Julia had lived all of her life in the then-remote mountain and college town of Blacksburg. William, who had grown up on plantation in Madison County in relative comfort and security before the war, had returned from the war in 1864 to discover much of his family's estate lost or sold. He and his brother Catlett ran their family's farm until 1866, when William left to study medicine in Culpeper Court House, Virginia. He continued his medical studies in Washington University in Baltimore, earning his M.D. degree in February 1869. Soon after this, William left home to pursue his medical career in Rockingham County, in the heart of the Shenandoah River Valley, and it was here that he first wrote to Julia.
About the Author: Although a technical writer for nearly twenty years, Anne Price Yates began life as an artist. She studied at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh in the Tam-O-Shanter and Palette classes from fifth grade until her freshman year in high school and was painting with oil paints by the age of 13. At age14, She was among the youngest of 16 students who researched, designed, and painted large murals for a major exhibition of Medieval and Renaissance Arms and Armor at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. Local newspapers, KDKA television station, and Life Magazine extensively reported the project. The Carnegie Magazine covered the work as well. During these years she also wrote stories, many of which were critiqued by her seventh-grade teacher. Having discovered her parents' genealogical records some years earlier, she read them with fascination. In 1974, she joined a genealogical society and began to seriously researching her family history. She and her, father, W. Conway Price, collaborated to produce Increase in Prices, based on the research by her paternal grandfather, Harvey Lee Price, in Blacksburg, Virginia. She typed the 464-page manuscript on an IBM Selectric typewriter and indexed it by hand, then self-published the book in 1985. She and her father enjoyed their genealogical correspondence and collaboration. He compiled several other genealogical volumes and gave the manuscripts to his daughter, which she subsequently edited and published. The Brothers Conway was her own compilation of the autobiographies of her two great grandfathers. Next she transcribed the letters written by Catlett Conway to William Buchanan Conway, the Conway half-brothers whose autobiographies were the subject of The Brothers Conway. She had received the letters from her cousin Patrick Mizelle and initially did not plan to publish them. After reading them, she realized they held too much interest and history to file away and decided to publish them. Her current publication, A Year of Essential Correspondence, was a similar situation. She had received these letters from her cousin Patrick also and read with much interest. And again, the history and content seemed too valuable not to share.