By Clara Chenault

Richmond News, 1971

(I’ve added links below )

Old prejudice and hatreds die hard. The animosity engendered during the civil war was still strong in the South during the ‘90s.

A group of women I Nashville, Tennessee in the year 1894 had banded together “to honor the memory of those who served and those who fell in the service of the Confederate States; to collect and preserve the material for a truthful history of the war between the states; to record the part taken by Southern women in patient endurance of hardships and patriotic devotion during the struggle and during the Reconstruction of the South; to fulfill the duty of benevolence toward the survivors and to assist descendants of Confederates in securing proper education.”

The idea spared rapidly but reached Ray County in 1911. This was to be the 2,375^th chapter. The chapter almost overnight had 85 members. Their colors were read and white, the flower, carnation, and motto “Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget-“

The words ‘to fulfill the duty of benevolence toward the survivors’ in the creed were the key to their success. The federal government had immediately honored and made available funds for pensions to the Union soldiers but never made any contributions of any kind for the confederate soldiers even though the war was over and they were not United States citizens.

Needless to say, this added fuel to the fire of bitterness.

These daughters had a mission that grew into a crusade for a Cause. All the chapters in Missouri went together and bought 362 rolling acres just north of Higginsville for use by Confederate veterans.

A lovely southern style main building which housed the infirmary and business office appeared on the top of the hill’ smaller houses were built around it where husband and wife could live and have their gardens.

The Missouri state legislature did vote some funds…but nothing to brag about. The women shouldered the full responsibility and the Richmond women, because of their proximity, made regular pilgrimages to the home to cheer and comfort the inmates.

The late Wilson Hill said that I was truly a charity where all the money donated went directly to the place intended.

The chapter gave tribute to Colonel Benjamin A. Rives who was killed in the battle of Pea Ridge and Colonel Benjamin Brown who lost his life in the first battle in Ray County at Wilson’s Creek in 1861.

They bravely and proudly observed the birthdays of Lee, Jackson and Jeff Davis, and the battle dates of Wilson Creek and Westport. Their program subjects were on such things as the “Songs of Dixie”, “Forts in the South”, and Mrs. Nelson Hill talked on “Women in the South in War Time”.

Not all the time and attention of the organization was focused on Higginsville. They knew and visited with every survivor of the ugly war between states in the county. When possible, they remembered their birthdays. The Richmond Conservator reports such an instance in March 1923. “the Brown-Rives chapter prepared a cake with the age and other appropriate inscriptions for William E. Ringo for his birthday. Mr. Ringo has always taken an active interest in assisting members in the getting their papers and application blanks filled out. Of all the present members there are very few if any whom he has not given help in this respect. He entered the state militia in 1861 and served to the end of the war”.

His daughter, Mrs. Clarence Child, was a charter member of the United Daughters of the confederacy. Both she and her daughter, Mrs. Louis Child Jones are in the picture.

These women were superb cooks. When they had their teas the menu read like a page from Gourmet Magazine. Miss Louise Darneal told us that she was at a luncheon to honor a V.I.P. who was seated next to her “And could that woman ever talk”, Miss Louise said.

“I’ll never forget that day. Every time I would start to take a bit, she would start talking and courtesy demanded that I give her my full attention. I could have wept when the hostess took away my nearly full plate”.

Mrs. Wesley Allison often said she seceded from the Union “clear to the backbone” and she requested that they play Dixie at her funeral. That they did!

Time passed as it is wont to do. The Civil War receded further and further in memory.

The obituaries for the veterans came closer and closer together. By 1955 only ghosts inhabited the corridors and strolled over the beautiful grounds. As the primary reason for the organization waned so did the Brown-Rives chapter of Ray County. By 1950 there were only five or six faithfuls who met on the designated days and by 1957 the society drifted into oblivion.

In 1956 the state took over 207 of the acres and started a state school for exceptional children.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy of Ray County had lived and died for Dixie.

Higginsville, Missouri Confederate Home

Confederate Home Missouri Cemetery