Brierfield: plantation home of Jefferson Davis,
by Frank Edgar Everett
Category: History

Brierfield: Plantation Home of Jefferson Davis by Frank Edgar Everett, Jr. This is the story of a house, "Brierfield," and incidentally of a man, Jefferson Davis, and his family. The author traces the story of "Brierfield" from its construction in the antebellum period to its final disappearance in the twentieth century, a victim of war, floods, and fire. Most people associate Jefferson Davis with "Beauvoir," his home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the years after 1865, but "Brierfield" was his home during the most productive years of his life. We see Davis here as a young planter, a United States Representative and Senator, a Mexican War hero, United States Secretary of War, and President of the Confederate States of America. The tangled web of relationships involving Davis, his second wife, Varina Howell of Natchez, and his older brother and substitute father, Joseph Davis of nearby "Hurricane Plantation," unfolds against the physical setting of "Brierfield." Frank Edgar Everett, Jr. is the author of several books and articles on Mississippi history during the antebellum period. A trial lawyer, he also served as assistant attorney general of Mississippi and as a trustee of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.