The Papers of Jefferson Davis, with editor Lynda L. Crist have been compiled by and are stored at Rice University, Houston, Texas. From these, I pulled a very interesting time line on the life of Jefferson Davis, first and only President of the Confederate States of America.
There are some things I had not known, for instance that Jefferson Davis accepted the nomination for Mississippi governor and resigned his U.S. Senate seat in 1851 to run.
Other items of interest regarding the life of this famous icon of the South. Davis was baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal faith at St. Paul's Church in Richmond, May 6, 1862, approximately one year after the start of the War Between the States.
Released from prison in 1867, Davis became a vestryman at St. Lazarus Episcopal Church in Memphis in 1870, having moved to that city in 1869 to take the position of President of the Carolina Life Insurance Company.
Son Billy died of diphtheria at his parents' home in Memphis in 1872, the third son to die. Samuel had died at age 2 in 1854, and Joe had died in an accident in Richmond in 1864. Later Jeff Jr. was to die in Memphis of yellow fever in 1878. Youngest daughter Winnie died September 18, 1898 of malarial gastritis while visiting Rhode Island.
The oldest daughter Margaret married Joel Addison Hayes, Jr. at the St. Lazarus Episcopal Church in Memphis on New Year's day of 1876. Margaret and Joel's first child, Jefferson Davis Hayes was born March 22, 1877 but died of cholera at his parent's home in June of the same year. Margaret and Joel had four more children, Varina Davis Hayes in 1879, Lucy White Hayes, in 1882, Jefferson Addison Hayes in 1884 and William Davis Hayes in 1889.
The President died in New Orleans, Louisiana on December 6, 1889 and was temporarily buried in New Orleans on December 11. His final burial was in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia in 1893, after a 21-gun salute. Seventy-five thousand people witnessed the procession to the cemetery.
On October 17, 1978 U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed a bill to restore citizenship to Jefferson Davis which passed the U.S. Congress without a dissenting vote.
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