File #5: "Montgomery Daughters of the Confederacy at the Old Soldiers Home"

This artifact featured the United Daughters of the Confederacy’s Montgomery chapter in front of the soldiers’ home facility’s construction. That chapter and the U.D.C. itself endorsed the sentiment Camp W. J. Hardee’s United Confederate Veterans chapter held: “the home should be built, not only for the good that it will now do, but because it would live as a monument after all the old Confederates were gone. We want the greatest good for the indigent” [1]. Hence, the Daughters subsequently coordinated with the U.C.V. and Jefferson M. Falkner, the soldiers’ home director, through fund-raising and article publishing initiatives [2]. Therein, the Daughters reinforced the South’s values of paternalism through their shared concerns for the veterans’ care and, through that framework, presented said charge as a civic matter for Alabamians.

1. “An Important Movement By Camp Hardee, United Confederate Veterans. A Home for Old Soldiers Reported Favorably by a Committee -- Legislature to be Memorialized -- Lot for the Dead,” in the Birmingham Age-Herald (Mar. 4, 1896), in the University of Alabama Libraries, in the Library of Congress Digital Archive.
2. Marielou A. Corey, “A Visit to Soldiers’ Home at Mountain Creek and the Work that can be Seen,” in the Birmingham Age-Herald (Jan. 26, 1906), in the University of Alabama Libraries, in the Library of Congress Digital Archive; Chappel Cory, “Our Old Homes” and “Soldiers Home,” in “Mrs. Cory’s Report on Work of U. D. C. for the Past Year,” in the Birmingham Age-Herald (Nov. 2, 1913), in the University of Alabama Libraries, in the Library of Congress Digital Archive; C. C. Lovell, “Mrs. Cory’s Report Shows Continued Effort on Part of the Daughters in Aiding the Confederate Veterans,” in the Birmingham Age-Herald (Jan. 31, 1906), in the University of Alabama Libraries, in the Library of Congress Digital Archive.