I have been researching the Beauvoir Cemetery for some time in order to put together information on the veterans and their wives and widows. Hopefully this will result in a book that can be sold in the Beauvoir Gift Shop. I have found many interesting stories on the veterans--some during the war and some after. Last year Beauvoir had the night tour of the cemetery during October and most of my research was used for the scripts. I am not bragging, but I do want anyone and everyone who reads this to know I am serious about this research. This past February, I was honored to receive the first William Edward "Bill" Atkinson Award for Mississippi Civil War History from the Mississippi Historical Society.

If you have information on an ancestor buried at Beauvoir and would like to share info and photos, please contact me. Some of these people had great stories, and I have some photos submitted by their descendants. On other people I have nothing--absolutely nothing. They are not listed in the Resident Roster, no information in Beauvoir records--nothing but what is on the famous "cards" that no one I have talked to can remember who compiled the "cards."

I recently learned that Hurricane Camille in 1969 destroyed most of the original documents and information about the Jefferson Davis Soldier's Home at Beauvoir. What is left in the Beauvoir files is incomplete or wrong. Some of the tombstones in the cemetery are wrong or incomplete. The old veterans listed one thing on their pension applications and told the people at the Home another thing. For example, Patrick McLaughlin--he entered the Soldiers' Home on January 20, 1920. In the Resident Register under service is written "Capt. L. Sergia, Commander Soule." (real informative isn't it?) Actually he was a private in Companies A & I, 1st Louisiana Infantry. How I found his service is another story.

Today there is nothing physically left of the Soldiers' Home but the graves. I want to tell the stories of the men and women buried there.

Thank you,
Jane Sullivan