Death
Recognizing that she was dying, Dorsey rewrote her will in 1878. She bequeathed all her capital and, more importantly, Beauvoir to Jefferson Davis. Dorsey died in the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans on July 4, 1879, at the age of fifty. She had undergone an unsuccessful operation for cancer performed by Dr. T. G. Richardson, assisted by Dr. Rudolph Matas.
The Percy family sued but failed to break the will. After Jefferson Davis' death in 1889, Beauvoir was adapted as a home for Confederate veterans. Many were buried after their deaths in the cemetery behind the house. After the last veteran died, the property was adapted as a house museum.
Read more about this topic: Sarah Dorsey
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him meerly seise me, and onely declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwrack, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotencie might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“Hunger shall make thy modest zone
And cheat fond death of all but bone—”
—Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972)
“In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate,—no more. I cannot get it nearer to me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)