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Text originally published in 1956 under the same title.
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FIRST LADY OF THE SOUTH: THE LIFE OF MRS. JEFFERSON DAVIS
BY
ISHBEL ROSS
Illustrated
ILLUSTRATIONS
The following are grouped in a separate section after page 148
Mr. and Mrs. William Burr Howell
Varina Anne Banks Howell as a young girl
Judge George Winchester
Margaret Graham Howell
William Francis Howell
Becket Kempe Howell
Jefferson Davis Howell
The Briers at Natchez
A room at The Briers
Varina at eighteen
Varina and Jefferson Davis in 1845
Some of Varina Daviss jewelry
Varina in her early thirties
Joseph Emory Davis
Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson Davis before the Civil War
The Jefferson Davis children
Kate Davis Pulitzer
Mrs. Clement C. Clay
Mrs. Mary Boykin Chesnut
Lydia Johnston
The first White House of the Confederacy, Montgomery, Alabama
White House of the Confederacy at Richmond, Virginia
Brierfield after the fall of Vicksburg
Varina during the Confederacy
A cartoon of Jefferson Davis
Varina and Jefferson Davis in 1868
Varinas two daughters, Margaret and Winnie
Mrs. Jefferson Davis at Beauvoir
Two of the rooms at Beauvoir
Mrs. Jefferson Davis in her seventies
Sketch of Oscar Wilde by Mrs. Davis
Varina Davis in a four-generation picture
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am much indebted to descendants of Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson Davis for aid in the preparation of this book, and I should like to thank in particular their grandson, Mr. Jefferson Hayes-Davis of Colorado Springs, and their granddaughter, Mrs. Lucy Hayes Young, of Colorado and Arkansas, for personal reminiscences, anecdotes, and material bearing on the history of Mrs. Davis, and for checking vital facts.
No one has been more helpful in rounding up intimate family memorabilia, portraits, and inherited recollections of Mrs. Davis than her great-granddaughter, Mrs. John W. Stewart, of Santa Barbara, California. I am indeed most grateful to her for the interest she has shown in this biography and for her assistance in all respects.
Mrs. Young, Mr. Hayes-Davis, and Mrs. Stewart are all directly descended from Mrs. Jefferson Davis through her oldest daughter, Margaret Davis Hayes, the only one of Varinas children to marry and leave survivors. There are 141 Davis descendants in all, scattered across the country, including twelve great-grandchildren, twenty-nine great-great-grandchildren and three great-great-great-grandchildren. There have been several Varinas since the original Varina Davis, and both Mrs. Stewart and her mother were named after Mrs. Jefferson Davis.
I have also been generously aided by other branches of the family, and wish to express my indebtedness to Mrs. Ralph Wood, of Biloxi; Mrs. Stamps Farrar of New Orleans; Mrs. William McL. Fayssoux, of New Orleans; Mrs. Thomas Stone Howell of Alexandria, Louisiana; and Mrs. M. B. More, of New York City.
A wealth of excellent material was placed at my disposal by Miss India W. Thomas, House Regent of the Confederate Museum in Richmond, and Miss Eleanor S. Brockenbrough, her assistant. I am much indebted to both for their interest and co-operation, as I am to Miss Hayde M. Fortier and Miss Dora L. Pool, curator and assistant curator of Confederate Memorial Hall in New Orleans, where many of the Davis papers and relics may be found today.
Mrs. Marguerite M. Murphy gave me splendid assistance on my visit to Beauvoir, the Jefferson Davis Shrine on the Gulf Coast, which has many reminders of the years spent there by Mrs. Davis. And in Montgomery, Mrs. Daniel W. Troy showed me the treasures of the beautiful White House of the Confederacy in Alabama. These four centers have Davis documents and memorabilia indispensable to the biographer, and are evocative of the atmosphere in which Varina Davis passed some of the most crucial years of her life.
In New Orleans, Mr. and Mrs. F. G. Strachan received me most hospitably in the mansion where Jefferson Davis died and where Winnie Davis made her debut. In Natchez, Mrs. William Winans Wall showed me over The Briers, where Varina Howell grew up and where her marriage took place in 1845. Skilfully restored by Mrs. Wall, it is now one of the show places of Natchez.
I talked to a number of persons in Natchez who had family reminiscences bearing 011 the Davises and Howells, and among them were Mrs. Harry Winston, Mrs. J. Balfour Miller, Mrs. Charles H. Stone, Mrs. Arlie C. Warren, Miss Florence Harper, and Mrs. Edith Wyatt Moore. I am specially indebted to Miss Pearl Guyton, teacher and historian, for many suggestions and contacts.
Mrs. Eva W. Davis, director, and her assistant, Miss Zaidee Nield, were most helpful to me at the old Courthouse Museum in Vicksburg. Among others in the South to whom I am specially indebted are: Mrs. Julia Arnold, of Vicksburg; Miss Flora Walthall, of Jackson, Mississippi; Miss Mary L. Railey and Mrs. Carleton King, of New Orleans; Mrs. Mary G. Billups, of Columbia, Mississippi; Mrs. H. J. Leake of Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Mrs. Malcolm J. Triche and Mrs. W. A. Whitaker, both of Baton Rouge, Louisiana; T. W. Crigler, president of the board of directors of The Sons of Confederate Veterans, Macon, Mississippi; and Ray M. Thompson, executive editor of Down South , Biloxi, Mississippi.
I am much indebted to Miss Florence M. McIntyre, of Memphis, Tennessee, for personal recollections of Mrs. Davis and anecdotes bearing on the summers she spent at the Humberstone Club in Canada. Mrs. Merrill Parrish Hudson and Stephen Rice Phelan, both of Memphis, gave me enlightening material on the Davises involving the years they spent in Tennessee, and Bouvier Beale, of New York, recalled the close friendship of his grandmother, Mrs. J. D. Beale, and Mrs. Davis during the closing years of Varinas life.
Robert Douthat Meade, author of Judah P. Benjamin , Margaret Leech (Mrs. Ralph Pulitzer), author of Reveille in Washington , and Burke Davis, author of Gray Fox, all gave me helpful information, and I should also like to acknowledge with much gratitude the co-operation of Mrs. D. A. DeVore (Margaret C. DeVore), of Vicksburg, who has special knowledge of Winnie Daviss blighted romance. In this same connection I am indebted to Miss Nannie Mayes Crump, of Washington, who threw further light on this little known story, and whose collection of papers in the Library of Congress supplies the key to the role played by Mrs. Davis when the Daughter of the Confederacy fell in love with the grandson of a famous abolitionist.
