In 1706, on the banks of the Lynnhaven River in colonial Virginia, a woman named Grace Sherwood was tried and convicted of witchcraft. Her real crimes were growing her own herbs, healing her neighbors, knowing the names of plants and what they could do, and refusing to be less than she was.

Before they bound her and put her in the water she looked at them and said: “I be not a witch. I be a healer.” She floated. They called it proof of witchcraft. She called it surviving.

Grace lived to 80. Tended her farm. Kept her land. Raised her children. Never remarried. Never stopped knowing things. And 300 years later — on July 10, 2006, exactly three centuries to the day after her trial — Virginia Governor Tim Kaine officially pardoned her and restored her good name.

Her statue stands today in Virginia Beach — a raccoon at her side, rosemary and garlic in her basket. Curious. Knowing. Unbothered. Exactly as she was.

“Before this day be through you will all get a worse ducking than I.”

— Her warning to the onlookers, 1706

Local legend holds that all the rosemary growing in the Virginia Beach area traces back to a single sprig Grace Sherwood carried across the ocean in an eggshell. She sailed through the night. Returned before dawn. And the rosemary took root.

Whether or not it is literally true, it is spiritually true. She tended things across impossible distances. She brought something living home through the dark. And it grew.

Rosemary appears across everything we make at Sherwood and Sage — in illustrations, in packaging, in the language we use. It is Grace’s herb. It is ours too. And if you look closely at everything we make, you will find it growing there quietly, the way it always has.

Grace Sherwood came into our family through marriage — and with her came her story, her knowing, her refusal to be less than she was. That is the kind of inheritance that does not require blood. It requires recognition. And the moment we found her in our family tree, we recognized her immediately.

She grew herbs and healed people and loved animals and tended her land with fierce, quiet determination. She had the audacity to know things in a time when knowing things was dangerous. We recognized all of it. We still do.

Sherwood and Sage is run by Melissa and her daughter Delphine — a mother and daughter making things together, slowly and on purpose. We make paper goods, planners, stickers, and small wonders designed to help you tend what matters — your time, your relationships, your sense of self.

Every product we make is rooted in the belief that small, intentional things have real power. A planner is an act of self-tending. A sticker that makes you smile is a small mercy. A card in the mail is tending a relationship across distance. Grace knew this. She carried it in an eggshell across the ocean. We carry it forward in everything we make.

She called herself a healer. So do we.
Grown from old roots. Made for everyday magic.
Tend what matters.