BEAUVOIR, JEFFERSON DAVIS HOME AND PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY

Beauvoir was the domain of Jefferson Davis (1808-1889), former President of the Confederate States, from 1879 to 1889. Here he wrote in 1877 his memoirs, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881). The main house is a typical Louisiana cottage built from 1848 to 1852 by a planter, James Brown, who later sold his property. It was a friend of Jefferson Davis, Sarah Dorsey, who sold the property to the former president, after inviting him to start writing his memoirs from 1877. The decision to acquire the property was taken by Davis and his wife, Varina, in 1879. While a third of the sum had already been paid by Davis, Sarah Dorsey died. Jefferson Davis learned at that time that Sarah donated her to the domain. Jefferson Davis occupied her ten years before he died of illness. According to a clause in Sarah Dorsey's will, his own daughter, Winnie, inherited property from Jefferson Davis's death. When Winnie died in 1898, Varina, the widow of Jefferson Davis, inherited the property. Varina Davis sold the field in 1902 to the Mississippi Division of the sons of Confederate veterans. The organization built a dozen barracks, two hospitals and a chapel behind the main house. From 1903 to 1956, about 1 800 veterans and their families lived here. Many of them are buried in the cemetery of the property. The house was opened for visits in 1941 and the museum was built. In 1998, the Mississippi Division of the sons of Confederate veterans inaugurated Jefferson Davis's presidential library.

To date, the domain includes the presidential library and the Confederate Museum, the house, the library pavilion (which Jefferson Davis occupied before the domain was purchased, from 1877 to 1878), the Confederate cemetery, and landscaped gardens. Although the main house and library resisted the hurricanes Camille (1969) and Katrina (2005), several buildings and enclosures are reproductions built after disasters.