Varina Davis - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Varina Banks Howell was born at Natchez, Mississippi, the daughter of William Burr Howell and Margaret Louisa Kempe. Her father was from a distinguished family in New Jersey: his father Richard Howell served several terms as Governor of New Jersey and died when William was a boy. His mother was a relative of Jonathan Edwards and Aaron Burr. William Burr Howell, who inherited little money, used family connections to become a clerk in the Bank of the United States.

Howell relocated to Mississippi, the area for development of new cotton plantations. There he met and married Margaret Louisa Kempe (1806-1867), born in Prince William County, Virginia of a wealthy, planter family who moved to Mississippi before 1816. Her parents were Colonel Joseph Kempe (sometimes spelled Kemp), a Scots-Irish immigrant from northern Ireland who became a planter and major landowner, and Margaret Graham, born in Prince William County. Margaret was illegitimate, as her parents, George Graham, a Scots immigrant, and Susanna McAllister of Virginia, never officially married. (There were suggestions that McAllister may have been of mixed race; unfriendly residents of Richmond described her granddaughter Varina, when married to Jefferson Davis, as looking like a "mulatto" or "Indian squaw.")

After the Kempe family moved to Mississippi, Joseph Kempe also bought land in Louisiana. For Margaret's marriage with Howell, he gave his daughter a dowry of 60 slaves and 2,000 acres of land. William Howell worked as a planter, merchant, politician, postmaster, cotton broker, banker, and military commissary manager, but never secured long-term financial success. He lost the majority of Margaret's sizable dowry and inheritance through bad investments and their expensive lifestyle. They suffered intermittent serious financial problems throughout their lives.

Varina was the second Howell child of eleven, seven of whom survived to adulthood. She was described as tall and thin, with an olive complexion attributed to Welsh ancestors. When she was thirteen, her father declared bankruptcy, and the Howell family home, furnishings and slaves were seized by creditors to be sold at public auction. Her mother's Kempe relatives intervened to redeem the family's property. It was one of several sharp changes in fortune that she would encounter in her life. Varina grew to adulthood in a house called The Briars, when Natchez was a thriving city, but she learned that her family was dependent on the wealthy Kempe relatives of her mother's family to avoid poverty.

Howell was sent to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for her education, where she studied at Madame Deborah Grelaud's French School, a prestigious academy for young ladies. Grelaud, a Protestant Huguenot, was a refugee from the French Revolution, who founded her school in the 1790s. One of Varina's classmates was Sarah Anne Ellis, the daughter of extremely wealthy Mississippi planters. (After the Civil War, Sara Ellis Dorsey, then a wealthy widow, helped support the Davises.)

While at school in Philadelphia, Varina got to know many of her northern Howells family; she carried on a lifelong correspondence with some, and called herself a "half-breed" for her connections in both regions. After a year, she returned to Natchez, where she was privately tutored by Judge George Winchester, a Harvard graduate and family friend. She was intelligent and better educated than many of her peers, which led to tensions with Southern expectations for women. In her later years, Varina Howell Davis referred fondly to Madame Grelaud and Judge Winchester; she sacrificed to provide the highest quality of education for her two daughters in their turn.

In 1843, at age 17, Howell was invited to the home of their family friend Joseph Davis to spend the Christmas season at Hurricane, his 5,000 acres (20 km2) cotton plantation. Located at Davis Bend, Mississippi, it was a few miles south of Vicksburg. During her stay, she met her host's much younger brother Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate and former Army officer, who was then working as a planter managing his own cotton plantation.