Phoebe’s Journals: The Words She Left Behind
In 1889, a ten-year-old girl picked up a leather journal. Her tutor told her to write, so she did. She wrote about family, about fights, about faith and doubt. She wrote as if no one would ever read it. But more than a century later, her great-great-great-granddaughter, Chloe Weston McKenzie, opened a dusty cabinet and found those words waiting. Today, Chloe brings Phoebe’s voice back to life, not as a figure from the past, but as a voice still speaking to us now.
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About the Author
Chloe Weston McKenzie
Chloe Weston McKenzie is the editor and author who brought Phoebe’s Journals to life for modern readers. In 2006, while sorting through her great aunt’s belongings, she discovered a locked cabinet in an old barn. Inside were seven leather-bound journals written in the hand of her great-great-great-grandmother, Phoebe Miller. Sitting on the barn floor, surrounded by dust and straw, Chloe read the first pages and felt as if she had met Phoebe in person.
What began as a family discovery turned into a deep calling. Chloe spent years carefully editing and preparing the journals, working with her cousin Allison Carroll to preserve every word as Phoebe had written it. Together, they honored a woman who lived more than a century earlier, ensuring her story would not fade. Chloe is not only the voice behind the project but also the bridge that connects a forgotten past with readers today.
About the Book
Phoebe’s Journals open with the plain words of a ten-year-old who had just been handed a notebook. At first she wrote about everyday things, school lessons, the church in High Wycombe, her tutor Lady Alice, the horses her family cared for, even how her mother made soap. She laughed at her own mistakes, argued in the margins, and put down the thoughts most girls were told to keep to themselves. As the years went on, her pages began to change. They show a girl growing into a young woman, testing ideas about faith, family, and the world that often seemed bigger than she was.
The strength of these journals lies in how unpolished they are. Phoebe never tried to sound important, she simply wrote what she saw and felt. Those words sat hidden for decades until Chloe Weston McKenzie, her great-great-great-granddaughter, found them locked away and decided to share them with the world. Reading them today, you do not feel like you are studying history, you feel like you are listening to someone who lived, struggled, and dreamed much like we do.