The star of Pascagoula. [volume] (Pascagoula, Miss.) 1873-1878, 1877-09-21
SAD FATE


New York Dispatch A week ago
there died in the a%lmsheuse at Newport,
Kentucky, opposite Cincinnati, a woman
whose social record on the western CONT
nent is a remarkable one. Her story is
well known to many. A brief resume
of it, however, will be of interest to all
readers Of the Dispatch. Helen Maude
Mosely was the only child of a late ex-
governor of Florida. Educated in a
French convent, reared in what is termed
the " lap of luxury" she was, two years
before the civil war, the belle of the
southern watering places and a leader in
the society to which her fathers wealth
and social standing gave her entree. In
1853 she married a prominent physician
in Savannah, Georgia. In 1860 she was
attended at childbirth by another we'll
known member of the Esculapian guild
of that city. The acquaintance thus
began ripened into Illicit intimacy, and
the discovery of the liason resulted in a
divorce and the abandonment of the
young wife by her husband. Her lover
soon tired of her, and the outbreak of
war found her penniless and friendless
in Savannah. She then made the &C
q%uaintance OF a man who afterward be-
came a commissary-general and a large
contractor in the service of the confed-
eracy, and lived with him until the entry
of the union troops into Savannah, when
he fled with Bragg s army. On the morn
ing after the occupation OF the city by
the federal army, a young officer of an
Ohio regiment, who had been posting
n rdu in tho atraat vi har at Iar 81.
den gate, and asked her for a glass of
water. Learning that she was
alone, he posted a guard over
her house, and by various other attentions
soon came to occupy the place of the alb
sent contractor. Her house, during this
period, was a favOrite resort of many
union officers, but she is said to have
been unalterablv faithful to the one.
In conversation with a Dispatch reporter,
one of the then habitues of the house de-
scribes "NelIy Walsh, " as she called her
self, as a lady in every sense, OF social
and intellectual development. Previous
to the war she had written for various
pa~pers--notably the New York Ledger
over the name of "Flora de Forest. " She
a woman of a deeply devotional ma.
ture, and to use the informant's own
words, "drank and ate opium to kill her
memory" When the regiment of her
left Savannah, Nelly Walsh applied
to one of the generals in changes sol
der whose name stands among the first
the records of the rebellion-for a
continuance of the protection. The
general did more. He assumed the duty
and when he took charge of a
department., one of his adjutants escorted
5he fair rebel to his train. She lived
with him several years, and when he was
appointed to a mission abroad he took :
Ter with him. His efforts to secure her {
standing there, and, after his re-
urn, in this country, caused great scan :
Ial and a fluttering in high society. He !
lung to her faithfully, however, and it o,
vas only when the opium habit gained /
ruinous ascendency over her that he -,
eft her, ever then giving her consider =
BILE sum of money. Off this and the =
roducts of her pen she lived for a couple
f years more, writing for several of
he local serial papers;buther be~settingsin
rought her down step by step until her
rain refused its office, and she disap- y
How she lived from that time !
ntil, halt crazed and wholly broken !
own and hopeless, she obtained sdmis- y
on to the New York poor house, will =
ever be known. Her identity was es =
iblished from her incoherent rawlings a
nd a few remnants of letters in her u
For weeks before she died she :
as insane. Every night and morning, u
lstinctively, as it were, she repeated the "
learned in her happy youth in =
er French school, and her last words a
ere a supplication to her creator. In II
er maddened moments the recital of a :,
erse of poetry would calm her. She y
iked continually for her child.-a little =,
RI long since Gead--the very child in "
wing birth to whom she had met her a.
ducer. No word ever escaped her as >
her own life since 1875. The physicians u
port serves as a pregnant comment on -
e frightful habit to which she was a u
I'VE For two weeks previous to her IL
,ath she consumed two ounces of laud- ;.
lum a day" i: