Two years ago I wrote about the almost marriage of Fred Wilkinson, grandson of Sam May, to Winnie Davis, a daughter of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. This article was written primarily from the viewpoint of Fred, as best I could capture it from an historical viewpoint. My colleague, Karen Dau, NYSCU and First Universalist Church of Rochester Historian, subsequently sent me some information that gives the same story from Winnie’s viewpoint. This information comes from Crowns of Thorns and Glory by Gerry Van Der Heuvel (NY: E. P. Dutton, 1988).
When Winnie and Fred fell in love in 1888 after she had visited friends in Syracuse, they both knew there would be problems with their respective parents, especially Jefferson Davis and his wife Varina, who were still smarting over the loss of the Civil War and his imprisonment for a period. Because Sam May, who had died in 1868 three years after the war ended, was still known throughout much of the south as one of those “abolitionists” who had been thought responsible, in part, for causing the war, they were none too happy about this romance. Jefferson was very much against it and let her know it. She had been born in 1864, in Richmond, Virginian, in the “White House” of the confederacy and was actually known throughout the south as the “daughter of the confederacy,” so there was much at stake here. Winnie was so distraught over all the disagreement that she became very thin and run-down. Jefferson then convinced her to go with friends on a cruise to Europe. Unfortunately, when she was in Paris in December of 1889, her father died. Her resulting grief added to the depression she felt over the unfortunate love affair.
Varina then decided that she did not want to sacrifice her daughter’s happiness because of past Confederacy issues and actually announced their engagement in April of 1890. The furor in the southern newspapers was actually much greater than anyone had even anticipated. About this time inquiries were made by some of her family members into Fred’s circumstances and the word came back that he would have trouble supporting a wife and eventual family. As a consequence, Fred learned of these inquiries, became angry, and wrote Winnie a fairly heated letter. One thing led to another and Varina used the newspapers once again to say the wedding was postponed. By the fall of that year the engagement was finally broken off.
It is difficult to know how much that broken engagement affected her. She did go on to become somewhat fairly well know as an author, but her health never regained its full vigor. She died in September of 1898 at the age of 34. She was buried with full military honors. Standing in the back of the church during the services was none other than a very saddened Fred Wilkinson. What could have been was never to be.
Rog Hiemstra, Chair, History Committee
Written September 14, 2009
