Buford Place

Buford Place is a historic property situated between Finch's Landing and the Buford Place itself, in the rural landscape of Maycomb County, Alabama. It is most significant as the childhood home of Miss Buford, the aunt of Miss Maudie Atkinson, who played a crucial role in the education of Calpurnia, the Finch family's housekeeper. The place represents the intertwined histories of the white landowning families and the Black community in the post-Reconstruction South, and it serves as a geographical and social landmark that helps define the Finch family's origins and connections.

Location and Setting

Buford Place is located in the area between the Buford Place and Finch's Landing, a region that Calpurnia described as her childhood home. She grew up there, spending all her days working for the Finches or the Bufords before moving to Maycomb when Atticus Finch and his wife married. The property is part of the same rural landscape that includes Finch's Landing, the ancestral Finch home built by Simon Finch, which features a two-storied white house with porches, a separate kitchen, and a widow's walk. The area is characterized by its proximity to the Alabama River, with traces of an old cotton landing where Finch slaves once loaded bales and produce.

Role in Calpurnia's Education

Buford Place is most notable as the home of Miss Buford, Miss Maudie Atkinson's aunt, who taught Calpurnia her letters. Calpurnia learned to read from Miss Buford using a copy of Blackstone's Commentaries, a gift from Scout and Jem's grandfather, Finch. This education made Calpurnia one of only about four people at First Purchase African M.E. Church who could read, and she later taught her eldest son, Zeebo, using the same book. The connection between Buford Place and literacy highlights the informal networks of education that existed in the rural South, where white women sometimes taught Black children to read despite the social and legal barriers of the era.

Connection to the Finch Family

Buford Place is part of the broader social geography that defines the Finch family's place in Maycomb County. Calpurnia's upbringing there, working for both the Finches and the Bufords, illustrates the close, though hierarchical, relationships between the white landowning families and the Black laborers who worked their land. The property is mentioned alongside Finch's Landing as part of the landscape that Calpurnia knew intimately, and it helps explain her deep familiarity with the Finch family history and her role as a bridge between the Finch household and the Black community of Maycomb.

Narrative Significance

Buford Place appears only briefly in the narrative, but its mention carries thematic weight. It underscores the theme of education and literacy as a form of empowerment, as Calpurnia's ability to read—acquired at Buford Place—enables her to navigate both the white world of the Finches and the Black world of First Purchase. The place also reinforces the novel's exploration of the complex, often contradictory social ties that bind the races in the segregated South, where personal relationships of care and instruction could exist within a system of profound inequality.