Varina Howell
From Free net encyclopedia
Varina Howell (May 7, 1826 - October 16, 1905) an American author is best known as the wife of Confederate President Jefferson Davis during the American Civil War.
She was born to William B. Howell and Margaret Lousia Kempe in Natchez, Mississippi (In the 1880 U.S. Federal Census for Biloxi, Harrison County, Mississippi, Varina Davis's place of birth was listed as Louisiana; her father's place of birth was listed as New Jersey, and her mother's as Virginia). Her grandfather, Richard Howell, was Governor of New Jersey for numerous terms.
Varina attended Madame Greenland's school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1844, when she was 17 years old, Varina met 36-year-old Jefferson Davis. In 1845, the two married at "the Briars," her parents' home in Natchez. Jefferson Davis served in both houses of the U.S. Congress as a Representative and a Senator and was the United States Secretary of War in the cabinet of President Franklin Pierce.
She became the First Lady of the Confederate States of America, when Jefferson Davis became the President of the Confederate States. In May 1861, they moved to Richmond, Virginia, and lived in the White House of the Confederacy, during the American Civil War (1861-1865).
After the war, her husband was imprisoned at Fort Monroe, in Phoebus, Virginia, for two years. Although eventually released on bail, and never tried, Jefferson Davis, lost his home in Mississippi and his U.S. Citizenship as well. In the early 1870s, with the help and aide of a friend, Sarah Doherty, Jefferson and Varina purchased Beauvoir, the Mississippi estate to which they had retired.
Following Jefferson Davis's death in 1889, Varina published Jefferson Davis, A Memoir in 1890. She then moved to New York City, New York, in 1891 to pursue a literary career, and gave Beauvoir to the state of Mississippi as a Confederate veterans' home.
Varina Howell Davis died in New York City on October 16, 1905, survived only by one of her six children. The former "First Lady of the Confederacy" is interred at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia adjacent to the tomb of her famous husband.
Trivia
- In modern times, it is commonly thought in the Richmond area, where Mrs. Davis was the only first lady of the "Lost Cause", that the community of Varina, Virginia was named for her. However, the name originated hundreds of years earlier as John Rolfe and Pocahontas lived at his Varina Farms tobacco plantation on the James River in 1614.