This granddaughter of Declaration of Independence signer George Walton is profiled in the fascinating and readable biography Madame Le Vert by Atlanta writer Frances Gibson Satterfield. Mrs. Le Vert was born Aug. 11, 1811, in Augusta. She spoke five languages so fluently that she conversed with Pope Pius IX in Italian and the Marquis de Lafayette in French.

When her father was territorial governor of Florida, according to her obituary, ``she was invited, while yet a girl, to select a name for the future capital of Florida and chose the musical Seminole word Tallahassee.''

Much of her fame as an adult came from Souvenirs of Travel, a book of observations that she published after an extensive trip to Europe. It made her internationally known. She also was a contributor to periodicals in America and England for several years. Her life wasn't a bed of roses. 1849 saw the deaths of her brother Robert, 36, her daughter Sally, 8, and her daughter Claudia, 10.

During the Civil War years, her mother died in 1861, her father in 1863 and her husband in 1864. The people of Mobile, Ala., where she was living at the time, resented her prewar friendship with Northerners and Union Army officers and labeled her a traitor.