(10 minute job..LOL)
Posted on 07/19/2014 4:15:19 PM PDT by re_tail20
Mary O'Melia left Ireland for America as a young widow with three children before she was hired as housekeeper at the White House of the Confederacy. An intimate witness to history, she also has been much of a mystery.
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.
But there was more.
"What really took my breath away is she said she had a photograph of Mary," said Cathy Wright, curator at the Civil War Museum, formerly the Museum of the Confederacy.
"Considering that it's been almost 150 years since she left the White House that anyone has been able to look at her face is just remarkable," Wright said in an interview.
The tintype adds a human dimension to what is a tantalizing but frustrating portrait of a woman who left her children in Baltimore to oversee the White House in the capital of the Confederacy during the duration of the Civil War but publicly revealed little of the experience.
O'Melia was among a staff of 20, was a confidante to the first lady, and may have been in the mansion in April 1865 when President Abraham Lincoln visited after Confederate defenders left the city smoldering. Historical records are unclear on that point.
The discovery is important nonetheless because the museum, which is next door to the White House, has strived to piece together the often untold lives of the African-American slaves, free people of color and European immigrants who worked as domestics for the Davis family.
"One of the more elusive figures was Mary O'Melia," Wright said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
150 years later, it's just a little difficult to say he was utterly and entirely wrong.
(10 minute job..LOL)
well done!
Ah but the difference is that he was alive at the time and was one of the founders of the CSA. His view point is as vital to understanding the Civil War as the view points of the founding fathers on the American revolution.
Pushing ‘ the lost cause’ notion that came only AFTER the war was lost is not useful. History is usually messy but we can’t pretend that causes and conditions of the times were what they were. To pretend otherwise says we will never fully learn the lessons.
I think it was Theodore Roosevelt who first used the term "White House" to officially refer to the Executive Mansion. I would assume that referring to the Confederate version as the White House is more recent as well. Actually, the building in Montgomery that is usually referred to as the first Confederate White House was painted grey.
Yep. TR’s executive order, but it had been called the ‘White House’ even before it was burned in the War of 1812.
I refurbished some of my grandmother's relatives old photos, and she really liked them.
Example:
Before:
After:
(It really doesn't show up well here, but the original photo was in really bad shape.)
Very well done.
Thanks. They’re fun to do.
Anyone who has an old antique photo in bad shape with spots, cracks, etc., post it and I’ll see what I can do.
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