Feb 24-25 Biloxi Mississippi

Jefferson   Davis' House

Been leisurely making our way toward New Orleans where we have reservations for the weekend. Spent one night in Gulf Shores, Alabama in a small park right on Mobile Bay. Most of the folks are there for the winter and from Michigan or Wisconsin. They all get together for a campfire and cocktails most evenings and they invited us to join them. It was pleasant to socialize and swap stories. We got our lead for a good place to stay in Biloxi from one of the folks.

Our tax dollars at work

We are staying in Cajuns RV park here in Biloxi, right next to the Gulf of Mexico. It was foggy when we first got here so we couldn’t see much, but today it is clear and we can see the gulf and all the vacant lots along the shore line. It’s been 5 years after Katrina, and while there are few signs of broken buildings or uprooted trees, there are a lot of vacant lots and building foundations (mostly slabs) along Beach Boulevard. It looks like the devastation went in about two city blocks inland from the beach. Some of the tree stumps left by Katrina have been made into sculpture by local artists. The roads have been restored and new palms planted and a number of historic homes have been restored, including Jefferson Davis’ home.



Beauvoir, the Jefferson Davis Home and Presidential Library, is maintained and operated by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group that must be pretty long in the tooth by now. I had to promise Patsy, that given that I am a white, liberal smart ass from Berkeley, I would keep my mouth shut and keep my opinions to myself while on the premises.

The actual tour of the house was totally non controversial, Davis moved into the house well after the civil war in 1877. The house had been built in 1852 by James Brown, a plantation owner, and had fallen on hard times after the civil war. Two or three owners later had fixed it up and allowed Davis to purchase it for a nominal amount as he was not wealthy after spending a few years in a federal penitentiary. He obviously had benefactors who supported his lifestyle on this 87 acre spread. After Davis died, his wife, Verina kept the property until 1903, when she sold it to the Sons of the Confederate Soldiers who turned the property into a confederate old soldiers home. It operated as such until 1956. Those had to be some very, very old soldiers by that time! The house and grounds were then converted to a museum and presidential library. Through the years and many hurricanes, only the house and a couple of out buildings remain. Katrina did major damage to the house, it took over three years to restore the house to its original condition. The restoration work included putting on a new roof and restoring the fresco wall coverings which resemble kind of a painted rococo architectural style. Somehow most of the original furnishings survived or were able to be restored.

President Davis

The only controversial part of the tour (from my point of view) was a little movie they showed about Davis and his devotion to the Confederacy. The part about the negro servants who loved their masters so much that they fought for the Confederacy and felt so sad after the war was lost, was too much for me!

It’s on to the Big Easy tomorrow.