Sarah Dorsey - Later Years

Later Years

Soon after her husband died in 1875, Dorsey learned that Jefferson Davis, the former President of the Confederacy, was ill and bankrupt. She invited him to visit at the plantation in December 1876. Davis had been married since 1845 to his second wife, Varina Howell Davis, but they had suffered difficulties. (As a girl, Varina had also attended Madame Grelaud's French school.)

Impoverished after his imprisonment, the Davises had been living with their eldest daughter and her family in Memphis. Davis moved into Beauvoir on a permanent basis, where Dorsey provided him with a cottage on the grounds for his use.

There he began to write his memoir, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. Dorsey was instrumental in his success, organizing his day, motivating him to work, taking dictation, transcribing notes, editing and offering advice. Rumors quickly began to fly that the two were having an illicit affair, and it was nearly "an open scandal," but they refused to yield to it. Varina Davis became enraged and refused for a long time to set foot on Dorsey’s property. Eventually she accepted Dorsey's invitation to live there and moved into one of the guest cottages at Beauvoir.

When the Davises' last surviving son Jefferson Davis, Jr. died in 1878, the loss devastated both his parents. Varina Davis warmed to Dorsey's hospitality. That summer, Sarah Dorsey nursed Varina through a long debilitating illness. Soon afterward, Sarah Dorsey learned that she had inoperable tumors in her breast. As her health declined, Varina Davis became her primary nurse.