With the distinction of being the first female child born in Statesboro after the Civil War, Maude Brannen Edge began life as a curiosity of sorts. When she returned to her hometown in the late 1930s after having spent most of her adult life outside the South, she continued to be a curiosity: She read and spoke nine languages and had completed nearly all of the requirements for a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University. She had followed her pastor husband through six different states, borne seven children and survived the heartbreak of her husband’s suicide.