That was until this year, when a woman with a distinctive Irish lilt to her voice called The American Civil War Museum. The housekeeper, the woman said, was related to her late husband, and she had in her possession a necklace that Confederate first lady Varina Davis gave O'Melia.This much is known: she was born Mary Larkin on April 7, 1822, in Galway, in western Ireland. She was educated in a convent, and apparently the fine needlework the religious order of nuns taught her may have influenced her hiring by Varina Davis.Perhaps a more telling gesture of O'Melia's connection to the first family of the Confederacy was her correspondence with the Davis family after they parted and a wedding she and Varina Davis attended in 1867. They were the only white people in attendance at the wedding of Ellen Barnes, who had serv
Date: Jul 19, 2014
Category: U.S.
Source: Google
Photo of White House of the Confederacy housekeeper puts face on intimate ...
War Museum. OMelia served at the White House of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va.,as housekeeper for Jefferson Davis and his first lady, Varina Davis, and was a confidante of the first lady. The image of OMelia is now in the possession of The American Civil War Museum in Richmond. A woman who sa
Enough Southerners lived in early-day Virginia City to proposenaming the settlement Varina, in honor of Varina Davis, wife ofJefferson Davis, the Confederacys president. The request was shotdown by a judge who was a Connecticut Yankee.