1. Virginia Clay-Clopton was a political hostess and activist in Alabama and Washington, DC She was known as Virginia Tunstall, Virginia Clay, and Mrs Clement Claiborne Clay.
18 Facts About Virginia Clay-Clopton
1. 2.
Virginia Clay-Clopton took on different responsibilities after the Civil War.
3.
Virginia Clay-Clopton worked to raise funds for Confederate cemeteries and memorials.
4.
Virginia Clay-Clopton Caroline Tunstall was born in 1825, in Nash County, North Carolina.
5.
Virginia Clay-Clopton's parents were Anne Arrington and Dr Peyton Randolph Tunstall.
6.
Virginia Clay-Clopton was raised by several of her mother's numerous half-siblings after her mother died when Virginia was three years old.
7.
Virginia Clay-Clopton's father left her to her mother's family and moved to Alabama.
8.
Virginia Clay-Clopton lived first with the Drakes in North Carolina.
9.
At the age of six, Virginia was taken to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where she lived with her maternal aunt and her husband Henry W Collier, later appointed to the State Supreme Court.
10.
Virginia Clay-Clopton went to live with her maternal uncle, Alfred Battle, and his family on their plantation outside Tuscaloosa.
11.
Virginia Clay-Clopton was tutored but had much time to play with her cousins and have the run of the property.
12.
Virginia Clay-Clopton moved with him to Huntsville, Alabama, where his family was based.
13.
When her husband was elected by the legislature as a US senator in 1853, Virginia Clay-Clopton Clay moved with him to Washington, DC On the train they met numerous other people from the state who were going to be part of Congress and the administration, forming friendships that lasted.
14.
In rounds of dinners, Virginia Clay-Clopton Clay met other congressmen and their wives as well as members of the diplomatic corps and President Franklin Pierce's administration.
15.
Clement Clay and his wife Virginia Clay-Clopton were among Southerners imprisoned at Fort Monroe after the war; they were suspected of being involved in the assassination plot against President Abraham Lincoln.
16.
About this time, Jefferson Davis is believed to have fallen in love with Virginia Clay-Clopton Clay, carrying on a passionate correspondence with her for three years.
17.
In 1904, Virginia Clay-Clopton published a memoir titled A Belle in the Fifties, covering her life from girlhood through her confinement at Fort Monroe.
18.
Virginia Clay-Clopton is buried in Maple Hill Cemetery in Huntsville, Alabama, near her first husband.