Beauvoir Memorial Cemetery
Beauvoir's Confederate Memorial Cemetery is a plot of land on the back half of the property, lining up next to Beauvoir Drive. Our cemetery is the final resting place for a total of 784 graves made up of Confederate Veterans, Wives, Widows and Civilians. We are also the final resting place for Samuel Emory Davis, father of President Jefferson Davis.
In the front of our cemetery, we host the Tomb of the Unknown Confederate Soldier as well as the United Daughters of the Confederacy Memorial Archway.
In April of every year, we host Confederate Memorial Day to memorialize our Confederate Veterans at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Adopt a Confederate Soldier
For years, the local historical organizations have decorated the graves at Beauvoir for Confederate Memorial Day. In the other times of the year, the graves remained bare with the exception of a few graves that were decorated more frequently, as there are relatives in the area that honor their ancestors.
A few Staff members thought it would be an honorable gesture to keep and maintain flags on all of our graves year round, so the Adopt a Confederate Soldier campaign was born.
For a $5.00 donation, you sponsor one of the 784 graves in our Beauvoir Memorial Cemetery. In return for your donation, you will receive a "Confederate Veteran Card" which features a picture of the grave of the Veteran that you are sponsoring as well as some information about them from Stories on Stone: Beauvoir Memorial Cemetery by Mrs. Jane Sullivan.
All proceeds from our Adopt a Confederate Soldier campaign will go towards the purchase of Confederate flags to keep on our graves in the cemetery year round so that we can honor all of those who fought or supported the Confederate Cause buried on Beauvoir property.
To Support our Adopt a Confederate Veteran campaign, you can send payment to:
Beauvoir, the Jefferson Davis Home and Presidential Library
ATTN: Adopt a Confederate Veteran
2244 Beach Boulevard | Biloxi, MS 39531
Facts About Beauvoir Memorial Cemetery
According to research that had been performed by Mrs. Jane Sullivan about the Beauvoir Memorial Cemetery, there are several people buried in the cemetery who were never inmates of the Soldiers’ Home. During the time that Beauvoir was a veteran's home, the word "inmate" did not have the same meaning that it does in modern times. The term merely meant that they were an inhabitant of Beauvoir. Some of those buried at Beauvoir Memorial Cemetery were Confederate veterans or the wives and widows of veterans.
The Confederate veterans and their wives were Edward and Parthenia Aldrich of Gulfport; and David and Mary Scarborough of Biloxi. William Spencer McDaniel of Gulfport, a Confederate veteran buried in the cemetery, was the husband of Eva Rowell McDaniel, who became an inmate after his death.
Three members of the family of Confederate General Samuel Wagg Ferguson were destitute inhabitants of Biloxi. His wife, Catherine Sarah (Kate) Lee Ferguson, could have been admitted as an inmate but did not wish to do so. His daughter, Miss Percy Ferguson did wish to be admitted, but she was not eligible. She sued the Soldiers’ Home under the provision for orphans of veterans and lost the suit. His son, James DuGue Ferguson, was buried in the cemetery on Hurricane Plantation near Vicksburg but was later exhumed and reinterred at Beauvoir.
Varina Davis Howell Droege was Mrs. Davis’s niece, and President and Mrs. Davis were her godparents. E.E. Droege was her husband. They have a large shared family stone out in the cemetery.
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Documents and letters in the Beauvoir archives reveal that the Beauvoir Memorial Cemetery had hand-painted wooden boards as grave markers before more permanent stones were obtained. One of the inmates, Van Buren Mass, was a sign painter from Biloxi paid to inscribe these wooden markers. In time, private funds were used to obtain more permanent headstones.
Eventually, the government would provide stones for the veterans, but the wives and widows who were buried in the Beauvoir Memorial Cemetery were not eligible for headstones from the government. As late as the 1970s there were still metal markers from the funeral homes identifying graves, and there are still unmarked graves in the cemetery as of 2018.
Some of the original stones have been broken or deteriorated and no replacements have been acquired. Many of the stones that show the veteran’s unit do not designate infantry, cavalry, or artillery when it could be any of those. In short, if there was any way to give mistaken information on a stone, it was done.