WITH A SEMI-HISTORIC GLIMPSE OF THE REAR GROUNDS OF THE SHRINE
A hallowed spot on the land, comprising the property of the Jefferson Davis Shrine, is the Beauvoir Confederate Cemetery where about 800 inmates of the Jefferson Davis Confederate Soldiers’ Home lie buried. The grave of Samuel Emory Davis, father of Jefferson Davis, is near the center, the remains and marker having been moved from the Brierfield Plantation on the Mississippi River, south of Vicksburg, Mississippi.
On the way to this secluded but loved burial ground, visitors pass along the woodland pathway once used by Jefferson Davis in his frequent walks around the grounds of this home of his old age. Almost daily in these walks he would turn off, as the visitors might find it interesting to do, to the little spring that he loved to sit by for its quietude and surrounding natural beauty.
Somewhat as it was in Davis’ time, there are magnificent trees, some old and many young, bamboo, palmettos, ferns, wild flowers and other native plants which give the Beauvoir grounds today the special appeal they have to sightseeing guests. But of late years, along with this native growth, has been added an informal planting of azaleas, camellias, sasanquas, loquats and other flowering shrubs close by the winding lagoon that has replaced old Oyster Bayou. Further on toward Beauvoir House is a mass planting of camellias and shrubs, while on the opposite side is a pretty rose garden, significant because of its being in the same plot used by Mrs. Davis for her loved rose garden. It is this combination of native and cultivated spots of beauty that makes the rear of Jefferson Davis Shrine in keeping with the front of it, widely known for the architectural attraction of the buildings and the almost unadorned beauty of the surroundings.