On Sunday afternoon, July 20, the Virginia Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy gathered in Lexington, Virginia's, Stonewall Jackson Cemetery to lay a UDC grave marker at the final resting place of one of their own, Mary Anna Morrison Jackson, the widow of Confederate General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson.
After Jackson's first wife, Elinor Junkin Jackson, died in childbirth, Jackson married Mary Anna Morrison, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister from Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1857. The union was to produce Jackson's only heir, a daughter whom he named Julia after his mother. Julia was born just a few months before Jackson's death following his accidental wounding at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863.
After the general's death, Mrs. Jackson returned to her native North Carolina with Julia, who subsequently married William Christian and gave birth to a son and a daughter. Mrs. Jackson, who never remarried and wore widow's weeds for the remainder of her life, took on the task of raising her two grandchildren following Julia's untimely death in her late twenties.
In 1898, Mrs. Jackson organized and became the first president of Stonewall Jackson Chapter #220 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Charlotte. Elected president for life, Mrs. Jackson presided over the activities of the chapter until failing health forced her to relinquish her duties. A fixture at reunions of Confederate veterans throughout the South in the years following the war, she remained honorary president of the chapter and an honorary president of General until her death in 1915.
Mrs. Jackson's body was returned to Lexington to lie next to her husband in the town cemetery, which now bears his name. In a year that has seen the New York Division place UDC markers on the graves of Varina Howell Davis, Winnie Davis, and Margaret Hays Davis in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery, the Virginia Division decided it was time to honor their sister Mary Anna Jackson in like fashion. With the permission of the North Carolina Division, to which Mrs. Jackson belonged, the July 20 ceremony was arranged.
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The ceremony opened with an invocation offered by honorary associate UDC member and Jackson biographer Dr. James I. Robertson, a professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and an Episcopal deacon. Following Dr. Roberston, Ms. Joanna Smith, curator of the Stonewall Jackson House in Lexington, spoke on the life of Mary Anna Morrison Jackson, and Col. Robert F. Hunter, historian of the Lexington Presbyterian Church where the Jacksons worshipped, talked about the couple's religious life. Mrs. M.E. Terwilliger, current president of Stonewall Jackson Chapter #220 in Charlotte, North Carolina, spoke about Mrs. Jackson's relationship with the UDC in general and the Stonewall Jackson Chapter in particular.
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| The UDC grave marker for Mary Anna Morrison Jackson is unveiled by Mrs. Donald N. Bodell (center), chairman of the Virginia Division's Grave Marker Committee, with the assistance of Mrs. Francis S. Palmer (left) and Mrs. Mark R. Allen (right). |
Following the unveiling of the grave marker, wreaths were laid at the grave by Mrs. Francis S. Palmer, past President General of the UDC; Mrs. Mark R. Allen, Virginia Division President; Mrs. John R. Boothe, Recording Secretary of the North Carolina Division; Mrs. M.E. Terwilliger, president of Stonewall Jackson Chapter #220 in Charlotte, North Carolina; and Miss Vicki K. Heilig, District of Columbia Division, on behalf of the Florida Division's Mary Anna Jackson Chapter.
A closing benediction was offered by Dr. Robertson; following the retiring of the colors, the crowd moved on
to VMI for the burial of Gen. Jackson's warhorse, Little Sorrel.