Founder Story - Meet Laura

Somewhere between the urge to wander and the longing for home, I found the work that became Autumn Laurel & Co.®

I have always felt both pulls: the desire to be free enough to follow the next road, and the desire to be known, cherished, and rooted in something that matters. Appalachia has never felt simple to me. It holds fierce independence and deep belonging, beauty and difficult history, solitude and community. I wanted my work to make room for all of it.

The girl on the Colonial Parkway

When I was sixteen and needed to be alone with my thoughts, I used to drive along a quiet Virginia road until it became the Colonial Parkway. The trees leaned over the road; the Yorktown battlefields appeared through the woods. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for. I only knew I needed the quiet—and the feeling of being somewhere the land remembered.

I went to think, to dream, to quiet the storm inside me. History made me feel less alone. I didn’t yet understand why those places held me so strongly. I only knew the land remembered—and that something in me was listening.

My name is Laura Raschke. I’m a professor, a maker, the wife of an Army veteran, and a daughter of Virginia’s long and complicated past. I spent seventeen years in Savannah, Georgia, beneath live oaks draped in Spanish moss, surrounded by a city where history seemed to live in the air. Eventually, the pull of Virginia grew stronger. When I returned, the mountains, tidewater, battlefields, orchards, and autumn woodsmoke felt like more than scenery. They felt like memory—and like home.

A family story, told with open eyes

My family history reaches from France to colonial Tidewater Virginia and west into the Appalachian frontier. It includes Robert “King” Carter, whose wealth and power depended on the labor of enslaved people. That truth is central to the story; it cannot be treated as a footnote. I believe honoring the past asks for honesty as much as reverence. Autumn Laurel is named for the land and the seasons, not for a plantation legacy.

Service is another thread in my family’s history. My grandmother served in the Navy WAVES during World War II; my grandfathers served in the Army and Navy. My father graduated from the Naval Academy. Years later, when my husband deployed to Afghanistan, I watched him walk away and understood home differently: home is the person you are waiting to return.

When the threads came together

I became a professor because I believe knowledge can change how we see the world. I make candles because I have always needed to create something with my hands—something that can carry meaning beyond its physical form.

In a trade shop in Colonial Williamsburg, I stood among handmade soaps on wooden shelves and felt the separate threads of my life draw together: the land, the history, the need to make, and the search for home.

That is where the idea for Autumn Laurel & Co. took shape—not simply as a candle company, but as an American scent house.

Two landscapes. One scent house.

Our collections carry the places that shaped me. The Colonial Virginia Collection draws from Tidewater gardens, Chesapeake air, Williamsburg hearths, and the York River at dusk. The Appalachian Collection rises into the Blue Ridge, with orchard air, cider mills, woodsmoke, and the quiet of high-country mornings.

Hand-poured in Virginia, our candles and home fragrances are made to help a place, a season, or a memory find its way into everyday life. A familiar scent can invite reflection, bring someone to mind, or simply make a room feel more like your own.

Freedom to wander. A place to return.

I don’t believe those longings cancel each other out. I want the freedom to keep exploring and the grounding of people and places I love; room to become more fully myself and a life shaped by connection and purpose. That tension is part of my story, part of Appalachia, and part of the spirit behind this scent house.

Every fragrance we create begins with a story of place. I hope one of them finds its way into your home and becomes part of a story of your own.

Autumn Laurel & Co.®
An American Scent House
From Tidewater Virginia to the Appalachian frontier
Inspired by Place. Made Like Home.