Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

Collection is open to research.

Use Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Preferred Citation

Home for Needy Confederate Women. Records, 1862-1997. Accession 34092, Organization records, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.

Acquisition Information

This collection came to the Library of Virginia in four accessions. All have been combined and now are classified jointly under the number of the largest accession, Acc. 34092.

The original Acc. 34092 came in two parts: Transferred from the Department of General Services, Richmond, Virginia, 20 February 1990, and Gift of Mary R. Cross, Richmond, Virginia, 18 June 1991. Another large accession, Acc. 34471, was transferred from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, 18 July 1993.

Accession 34669, consisting of one of the Home's minutes books, 1949-1961, was transferred from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, on 12 May 1994. It is now filed in Series II, Box 6, Folder 6.

Accession 41124, consisting of documents largely related to the closing of the Home and relocation of residents to the Brandermill Woods facility, was transferred from the Virginia Department for the Aging, Richmond, Virginia, on 29 March 2004. The majority of its contents are filed in Series II, Box 10, Folders 17-20. The files of residents Floye Belle Crump, Mary S. Lynn, Bertha Cox Moore, Lila Lee Riddell, Mary Dorothy Wright, and Osa Lee Yates, also originally part of Acc. 41124, are filed alphabetically in the resident files of Series III.

Biographical/Historical Information

The Home for Needy Confederate Women is said to have originated with a small group of impoverished widows of Confederate soldiers living in Richmond after the Civil War. Having no other options, they combined their limited resources and set up house together. Even so, their financial situation remained grim, with residents sometimes having to salvage vegetables left over from the city market for food. Help came in 1897 from the Ladies Auxiliary of the Pickett Camp of Confederate Veterans, which raised $1,000 for the women at a benefit bazaar. In 1898, the General Assembly of Virginia followed up with a charter to "provide a home for needy wives, widows, sisters, and daughters of Confederate Sailors, Soldiers, and Marines." This action paved the way for an initial appropriation of $1,000 from the Commonwealth.

With the use of these funds and others raised by additional benefit bazaars, the women purchased a house at 1726 Grove Avenue in Richmond. When the Home opened there on 15 October 1900, it held eleven residents. Financial difficulties, which would persist throughout the life of the Home, continued to be a factor. Money came in somewhat sporadically, by means of the occasional benefit event or contribution from the state and local government. Still, partly as a result of a successful 1903 fundraising bazaar, Home trustees were able to purchase a larger house at 3 East Grace Street in 1904.

The Home could easily have folded altogether in these early years were it not for the work of Elizabeth "Betsy" Lyne Hoskins Montague (1868-1951), wife of Andrew Jackson Montague (1862-1937), a governor of Virginia (1902-1906) and U.S. Congressman. Taking the cause on her shoulders, Mrs. Montague championed the Home in a variety of arenas, including the Virginia legislature, United Daughters of the Confederacy (U.D.C.) gatherings throughout the state and nation, and personal meetings with East Coast philanthropists. Working initially as the Home's acting president (under President Mary Custis Lee, daughter of General Robert E. Lee), and then as president, she served the institution for some fifty-two years.

One of Mrs. Montague's early, critical accomplishments was to secure annual funding from the Commonwealth. After her 1915 plea to the General Assembly, the Home began receiving yearly appropriations that continued to be granted into the 1980's. Another hallmark of her service to the Home was her push to build a larger, safer, and more impressive residence for the women. Pointing to damage from a 1916 fire at the Grace Street home, an ever-growing pool of applicants, and a humanitarian duty to "the Women of the Sixties," Mrs. Montague launched a major fundraising campaign. She used the opportunity to voice her intense frustration--with the U.D.C. in particular--for what she regarded as a useless fixation with building monuments. The brochure for the Memorial Building and Endowment Fund Campaign reflected this viewpoint, rejecting the value of monuments of "cold and unfeeling stone," and urging support for "an active and ever-living SERVICE, for which there is an increasing and imperative need."

Succumbing to Mrs. Montague's persuasiveness, the Robert E. Lee Camp No. 1, United Confederate Veterans, offered a two and one-half acre tract of land on the site of its soldier home. The grant, which had to be approved by the Commonwealth as the actual owners of the property, was ratified in the General Assembly on 28 January 1926. As part of the agreement, the Home was constrained to accept only wives, widows, daughters, and sisters of Confederate veterans. This would become problematic over the years as the Home struggled to fill its rooms with this dwindling demographic, while having to turn away numerous applications from granddaughters and other female descendants.

With a variety of fundraising events, speeches, and personal appeals, Mrs. Montague made the proposed building a reality, in large part due to a $250,000 bequest from Dr. Alexander Spiers George (d. 1929). Construction began on the new residence at 301 N. Sheppard Street in 1931. It opened on 23 May 1932, with space for approximately 100 residents. Somewhat ironically, architect Merrill Lee built the new Home for Needy Confederate Women to mirror the north facade of the White House, and was allowed rare access to James Hoban's original plans for the design.

In spite of Mrs. Montague's exhaustive work for the Home, she still faced criticism from outside observers. One major flap involved the General Assembly's 1944 move to reduce the pensions paid to Home residents. Local newspapers printed allegations that Mrs. Montague led the House Finance Committee to the decision by suggesting that the pensions were unnecessary. She was further accused of ordering residents not to speak of the affair to the media, under penalty of expulsion from the Home.

Mrs. Montague's most vocal opponent in the matter, Delegate C. G. Quesenbery, went on to question the Home's admission policies. A long-standing rule mandated the surrender of each resident's assets to the Home upon entrance. Quesenbery charged that the Board gave preference in the selection process to those women who could provide a $5,000 "bedroom endowment," thereby betraying the stated mission of providing for the truly indigent. In 1946, the General Assembly formed a commission to determine whether the Commonwealth should continue funding the Home. The resulting 1947 report recommended that applications be accepted on a "first come, first served" basis, and further reiterated that only wives, widows, daughters, and sisters were entitled to state support.

With this incident behind her, Mrs. Montague stayed on as president until just before her death in 1951. One of her daughters, Janet Montague Nunnally (1895-1977), then took over as president of the Home. Mrs. Nunnally held the position until health reasons forced her to resign in late 1976. Taking up the family calling, Mrs. Nunnally's daughter Janet Roy Burhans succeeded her as president. She would see the Home through its final years.

While the financial situation of the Home had always been troubled, it was set on the path of ultimate collapse in the late 1970's and early 1980's. The combination of state funds, limited private donations, and the interest from the Home endowment could no longer cover expenses, and trustees were forced to pull from the endowment itself. Eventually, it became necessary to overstep the Commonwealth's "wife, widow, daughter, or sister" qualification to bring in new residents. In 1977, the Board altered its constitution to allow other lineal descendants to enter. This prompted the General Assembly to discontinue the Home's annual funding after the 1982 fiscal year. Home representatives continued to plead for assistance and were rewarded with another round of appropriations by the 1986 General Assembly. However, the money was not renewed in the next legislative session.

As the number of residents steadily decreased, maintaining the largely unoccupied, aging building became illogical and next to impossible. On 13 April 1989 the Board voted unanimously to close the Home and continue providing for the remaining residents in a private nursing home. Before the plan could be executed, 98-year-old resident Lila Lee Riddell filed a lawsuit attempting to prevent the move. She took her appeal as far as the Virginia Supreme Court but was unsuccessful. The Court ruled that the Home's agreement with its residents only guaranteed care and shelter, not tied to a specific location.

Following a plea from Home trustees, the 1989 General Assembly set aside funds to cover any expenses for the ladies' care that could not be met by the interest on the endowment fund. The Home's final seven residents, including Lila Lee Riddell, moved into the Brandermill Woods Health Care Center in nearby Chesterfield County in August 1989. The house and grounds reverted to the Commonwealth, which set them aside for the use of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Osa Lee Yates (1898-1997), daughter of a Confederate soldier and the last surviving resident of the former Home for Needy Confederate Women, died on 30 April 1997, just short of her 99th birthday.

Scope and Content

Records, 1862-1997, of the Home for Needy Confederate Women of Richmond, Virginia, include correspondence; Board meeting minutes; the Home charter, by-laws, rules and regulations; estate files consisting mainly of wills and court documents; Home histories; guest registers; various documents pertaining to state oversight of the Home; fundraising literature; individual files and collective notebooks containing information on residents and applicants; bills and receipts; ledgers; audit reports; endowment fund and investment statements; copies of relevant state legislation; documents pertaining to various properties owned by the Home; general infirmary records and individual patient files; newspaper clippings; photographs and drawings; and miscellaneous other files including a small group of letters written by Confederate President Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) and reproductions of the controversial "Dahlgren Papers."

Arrangement

The collection is arranged into the following series: