Beginning the Work

“So it only remains for us to begin the work” – UDC President’s report, January 19, 1898.

After hesitating for years, the UDC decided to start collecting artifacts.

Currier and Ives triple Portrait of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson, from approximately 1863

 

President Eliza Hall Nutt Parsley declared “…it is better to make a small beginning, than to delay any longer, as each year will add to the difficulty of the undertaking. We have already had a gift from General DeRosset of some valuable maps, and from Mrs. W. G. Thomas through the memorial association of a collection of photographs of confederate officers, about forty in number, and four larger confederate pictures nicely framed, two of them being portraits of Lee and Jackson. Other contributions have been promised as soon as we are able to receive and take care of them…”

The Idea becomes a Reality

 It took the ladies three years set up a Museum after the Wilmington Light Infantry offered them a room.

In December 1897, when the WLI again offered the UDC a room in the armory and a glass case, the chapter decided the time was right to try to make the museum a reality.

The women appropriated $25 for the Museum at the January 1898 meeting. And they announced to the world -- well the people who read the local paper -- they had reached an agreement with the Wilmington Light Infantry and secured room in the WLI’s building for a museum of “confederate relics.”

Colonel John D. Taylor’s Uniform about 1864