LaSALLE CORBELL PICKETT TO BE REUNITED WITH HUSBAND IN RICHMOND'S HOLLYWOOD CEMETERY

Mrs. General George E. (LaSalle Corbell) Pickett (Photograph courtesy of Mrs. Billie B. Earnest, Virginia Beach, Virginia)

LaSalle Corbell Pickett, third wife of Confederate General George Edward Pickett of Pickett's Charge fame, survived her husband by 56 years. When death finally took her on March 22, 1931, the Ladies' Hollywood Memorial Association, which held title to the Confederate Soldiers' Section of Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery, denied the Pickett family permission to bury her beside her husband. The General had been laid to rest not in the Confederate Officers' Section of the cemetery but on "Gettysburg Hill" among his men, many of whom had originally been buried on the field at Gettysburg and had been reinterred in Hollywood in 1872. Because the language of the deed specified that the Confederate Soldiers' Section of the cemetery was reserved for soldiers only, the Association feared that making an exception for Mrs. Pickett might unleash a tidal wave of requests from other Confederate widows that the terms of the deed would not allow it to accommodate.

Aghast at the decision, the Junior Hollywood Memorial Association immediately made two spaces available to the family in the Confederate Officers' Section of the cemetery. George E. Pickett III, grandson of George and LaSalle, refused the offer and angrily announced his intention to move the General to Arlington National Cemetery, where he could be interred with his wife beside him. Pickett was eventually persuaded to abandon his plan, and the General remained in Hollywood, the final resting place of Confederate notables such as Jefferson Davis, JEB Stuart, Matthew Fontaine Maury, and Fitzhugh Lee and two United States presidents. "Mother Pickett," as she was known to her family, was interred in Abbey Mausoleum in Arlington, Virginia.

Sixty-seven years later, the woman who claimed to have settled on her future husband when she first met him at the age of 8, has been disinterred from the now-crumbling and vandalized mausoleum near Arlington National Cemetery and taken to Hollywood Cemetery, where Virginia Division, United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Virginia Society, Military Order of the Stars and Bars will reunite her with "her Soldier" one day before the anniversary of her death.

The closing of the mausoleum has afforded Virginia Daughters a unique opportunity to pay tribute to Mrs. Pickett, who was an Honorary President of the UDC General Organization. The Military Order of the Stars and Bars, whose members are male descendants of Confederate officers, is working with the UDC to organize the ceremony to honor a woman whose postwar appearances at Gettysburg reunions led Confederate and Union veterans alike to hail her as a symbol of national reunification and healing.

According to Mrs. John H. (Nancy) Gum, President of Virginia Division UDC, "After General Pickett's death, LaSalle Corbell Pickett devoted her life to the giving of her time, her talents and her means to the preservation of the heroic and historic past. Finally, one hundred and twenty-three years after Gen. George E. Pickett's death, his wife will be buried next to him in Hollywood Cemetery. As our UDC motto expresses so beautifully, 'Love Makes Memory Eternal.'"

Mrs. Pickett and George, Jr., after the General's death in 1875 (Photograph courtesy of Mrs. Billie B. Earnest, Virginia Beach, Virginia)

The burial ceremony, which Mrs. Gum describes as a "sacred duty" entrusted to the UDC and the MOS&B, has been scheduled for March 21, 1998, at 2:30 pm, one day before the sixty-seventh anniversary of Mrs. Pickett's passing (Hollywood Cemetery does not permit interments on Sunday). Because she was an Episcopalian, an Episcopal funeral service will be conducted by Dr. Vienna Cobb Anderson, Associate Rector of St. Paul's Church in Richmond, where many Confederate government officials and military men worshipped during the War.

Members of the Pickett family from around the country plan to be in attendance at the ceremony. In a letter to Mrs. Gum, a Pickett family spokesman wrote "I was delighted to hear from you in reference to the UDC's plan to reinter the ashes of...LaSalle Corbell Pickett near her beloved husband....It is refreshing to hear of someone who is honoring 'Dear Mother'.... My late uncle, George E. Pickett III, tried very hard to have Mrs. Pickett buried at Hollywood by her husband at the time of her death, but was refused at the time."

The urn containing Mrs. Pickett's ashes, which was spared any vandalism because of its unmarked location 14 feet off the floor in the top row of Abbey Mausoleum's niches, will be placed in a wooden casket being constructed by a member of the Pickett family. A memorial stone marking her burial site beside the General's monument will be prepared by the Suffolk Monument Works of Suffolk, Virginia. A UDC member marker will be placed on the stone and dedicated during the ceremony.

Mrs. Pickett's remains will be escorted to their long-awaited place at her husband's side by family members, UDC and MOS&B representatives, a color guard from the Captain William Latane SCV Camp #1690, Confederate reenactors, and the Virginia Greys Fife and Drum Corps from Lynchburg, Virginia, where Mrs. Pickett once attended school.

Other details of the ceremony, which will be open to the public, are still being arranged by a joint UDC-MOS&B committee and will be announced at a future date.

Virginia Division UDC and the Virginia Society MOS&B express our thanks and appreciation to the following:

• Members of the Pickett family for allowing us to honor their ancestors
• The Hollywood Cemetery Board of Directors and General Manager David Gilliam for graciously allowing Mrs. Pickett to be laid to rest beside her husband, for waiving the interment fee, and for their cooperation throughout the planning of the reinterment
• The many individuals who have made generous contributions to the Reinterment Fund

The General and his lady LaSalle was only 15 when she left her home behind Union lines in Chuckatuck, Virginia, to marry the 38-year-old Pickett on September 15, 1863, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Petersburg.

Thanks to Mrs. B. Donald (Martha) Boltz (Fourth District Chairman, Virginia Division UDC) and Miss Vicki Heilig (past President, District of Columbia Division, UDC) for sharing the fruits of their extensive research into the life of LaSalle Corbell Pickett and to Mrs. Billie B. Earnest (Norfolk County Grays Chapter, Virginia Division UDC) for allowing us to use her previously unpublished photographs of Mrs. Pickett and her son George, Jr., in this Web article