"The Black Spies in a Confederate White House"

[Linda Anderson]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/20...house.html

"The one slave-spy we know the most about is William A. Jackson, the handsome coachman who appears to have been hired out by his owner at one point to work as a waiter in a Richmond hotel before being rented to the Davis family to drive them around the city...

"Her name in popular history is Mary Elizabeth Bowser, but she used many different names, in fact. She was part of an extensive Union spy network run by Elizabeth Van Lew, a Richmond society woman who once owned Mary, had her educated in the North, and freed her in secret only to enlist her in the spy ring that included, it seems, Mary’s assignment as a slave-servant in the Confederate White House. Mary was of mixed blood, and she may well have been tied by that blood to Van Lew’s family, but if she worked for the Davises, as she and others claimed, she did so under a false name and false pretenses. Varina, asked about her years later, said she’d never heard of her."

[Linda Anderson]

C-SPAN has a program on the First White House of the Confederacy in Montgomery, Alabama. It was built by William Sayre, an ancestor of Zelda Sayre who married F. Scott Fitzgerald. The house was originally located by the Alabama River. It was moved in 1921.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?406966-1/fi...onfederacy

[RJNorton]

Fascinating, Linda! Thank you for posting. I tried to find some photos of the house being moved but no luck. Must have been quite a process!

[L Verge]

Great house tour, and I'm sharing with my museum staff and volunteers. Thanks, Linda.

[Linda Anderson]

This is from the First White House of the Confederacy's website.

"With litigation complicated, demolition imminent and circumstances intolerable, a sympathetic governor came to the rescue. In 1919, Governor Thomas E. Kilby signed into law a bill appropriating $25,000 for the purchase and relocation of the House and created a White House Commission to administer it. By this time, the old home was a boarding house for trainmen and was in sad condition. The White House Association was able to purchase the House for $800 with $5.00 down. The White House Commission purchased a lot in the shadow of the Capitol and a Montgomery city engineer, after photographing and documenting it inside and outside, skillfully dismantled the House by thirds, numbered the lumber, moved it the ten blocks to its new site and reassembled it.

"Judging from the front-page newspaper accounts, spread over several days, the dedication ceremony at the opening of the restored First White House of the Confederacy on June 3, 1921, must have been one of the most thoroughly relished and enjoyable occasions in Alabama history. Hundreds of persons participated in an elaborate parade which ended on the south lawn of the Capitol grounds, where the ceremony took place. The White House Association gave the House, fully refurbished, to the people of the State of Alabama. The Governor accepted it and there was a banquet that night with a reception following, in which thousands of Montgomerians, Alabamians, Southerners and Americans participated."

http://www.firstwhitehouse.org/history/