Something You Didn't Know About the First White House of the Confederacy

I bet you didn't know that from 1921 until 1932 or so, the White House Association allowed Mrs. Alfred Tunstall of Greensboro to have a spare room at the southwest corner upstairs for her State Child Welfare Department. (That's where the "Westcott Room" is now). Mrs. Tunstall had gotten Legislative power to visit coal mines, jails, and alms houses to check on childrens' welfare.

She not only set up Alabama's first child welfare department but also Alabama's first adoption agency, all from the First White House of the Confederacy where Jefferson Davis and his family had lived in the spring of 1861 while Montgomery was the Capitol of the Confederacy.

Here is a funny story  - The Association was sponsoring an historical lecture of some sort downstairs and the Regent sent a note upstairs to Mrs. Tunstall: "Will you please be a little more quiet, we are teaching history down here?" To which Mrs. Tunstall replied, scribbled on the back of the note: "we are making history up here."

For years people would come in and say "I just wanted to see where my adoption took place!" See, I told you this was something you didn't know about the First White House!!!