In Search of Ellen Barnes McGinnis

BY KELLY HANCOCK

In a beautiful portrait photograph taken by J.H. Pope of Baltimore, Ellen Barnes McGinnis appears as a well-dressed, biracial lady with carefully coiffed hair and a serene disposition. Who was this woman who spent the last year of the War working in the Confederate White House as a maid to Varina Davis and as a nurse to her last child Varina Anne, “Winnie”?

Most importantly, was she enslaved or free?

Ellen Barnes McGinnis

ACWM Collection

That is the question that has loomed largest among Museum staff since the restored Confederate White House opened in 1988.

What staff did know was that Ellen maintained a lifelong relationship with Varina after the War and that she accompanied Varina and her children on their flight from Richmond in the spring of 1865. She was with the family when they were surrounded by U.S. cavalry troops outside of lrwinville, Georgia,on May l0. In fact, it was Ellen whom Varina sent with a bucket to accompany Jefferson Davis as he attempted to make his escape. Varina wanted it to appear that two women had gone to fetch water, but the ruse failed, and Davis was captured and transported to Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia.

Upon arriving at Fort Monroe, the U.S. officers in charge gave Ellen and the other servants the option of coming ashore if they did not want to go to Savannah, Georgia, where Varina was to be taken and placed under house arrest. According to Varina, Ellen’s husband Charles Barnes “forced her” to come ashore. That Ellen had a husband led many at the Museum to assume Ellen was free, since marriages between enslaved couples were not legally recognized.

However, just a few years ago a newly digitized interview with a reporter from the New York Times on July 2, 1865, shed new light on Ellen. The correspondent reported that Ellen was the “chattel of Peter W. Grubbs, druggist of Richmond” and that she had lived in the Grubbs household until she was hired out to work for the Davises on January 2, 1864. Ellen was enslaved - not free, as Museum staff had assumed.

The correspondent confirmed Varina’s account that Ellen came ashore at Fort Monroe because her husband made her, but he did something else: he asked Ellen “if she would like to return to [Mrs. Davis], and be again a bond-woman.” Ellen responded, “Oh, no, Sir, I never want to go South again as a slave - I would rather be free, much rather. Mrs. Davis was good to me, but I don’t want to be her slave, for all that.” These candid words helped breathe life into Ellen Barnes McGinnis.

Ellen’s words also inspired a search to discover more information. What else was there to learn about this strong woman?

The Papers of Jefferson Davis, edited by Lynda Crist and published by the Louisiana State University Press were a good place to start, but one of the letters only begged more questions. In her letter to Jefferson Davis written on April 7, 1865, after she left Richmond, Varina related how each member of the party was worried or “exercised” about something left behind. Jeff Jr. was “exercised about his pony” and Maggie “about her saddle.” In Ellen’s case, it was not something but someone: Varina wrote that Ellen was “exercised about her child.”

So, this woman who was a nurse to baby Winnie had a child of her own, but who was that child? A boy? A girl? How old?

In the mid-l980s, the Museum staff took great pains to track down every scrap of information related to the Davises, their time in the house, and the servants both free and enslaved who worked in the home to write an interpretive plan for the restored house at 12th and Clay. Because of this, every person associated with the Confederate White House has a file in the Museum’s archives.

Reviewing Ellen’s file caused one particular letter to stand out. In a letter to Varina Davis dated July 18, 1865, Ellen’s husband Charles wrote that “Mary Ann also sends her love to Maggie.”

Could Mary Ann have been the child Ellen left behind?

Indeed, the 1870 U.S. Census held the answer to this question. Listed in the household of Ellen and her second husband Frederick McGinnis (more on that later), now living in Baltimore’s 11th Ward, was a fifteen-year-old daughter named Mary A. What is striking about this information is that Mary Ann was Maggie Davis’s age. These two girls from very different backgrounds connected on some level. At least, they were close enough that Mary Ann sent her “love” to Maggie.

The relationship that existed between Ellen and Varina is equally intriguing. In spite of Ellen’s desire to be free, she formed a lasting bond with Varina. The separation that occurred when Ellen went ashore to join her husband Charles at Fort Monroe did not last long, for by 1866, Varina was allowed to visit and then move in with her own husband. She brought with her a formerly enslaved man, once a body servant of P.G.T. Beauregard, named Frederick McGinnis.

We do not know exactly how or when Charles Barnes died, but on May 7, 1867, Frederick and Ellen were married at Fort Monroe in Carroll Hall (where Jefferson Davis spent the last year of his imprisonment). Varina and Jefferson Davis attended the wedding - as did Mary O’Melia, the Irish widow who served as the Davis’s housekeeper during the War.

Carroll Hall, in which President Davis was confined as a prisoner and where Ellen and Frederick McGinnis were married.

ACWM Collection

After Jefferson Davis was released on bail in May of 1867, Ellen and Frederick accompanied the Davises to Canada. The McGinnises spent only about six months there before moving to Baltimore, where they lived the rest of their lives. Despite the physical distance from the Davises, they remained in contact. Ellen could neither read nor write, so just as with her first husband Charles, it was Frederick who maintained the correspondence, relaying messages from Ellen and news of their life in Baltimore.

In October 1878, Frederick wrote to express their condolences upon the death of Jefferson Davis, Jr. Addressing them as “My Dear Friends,” Frederick wrote, “[Y]our loss is equally our loss ... You have our prayers my good, good friends.” After directing the Davises to look to God for comfort, he ended the letter with a bit of good news, “We have a little daughter Emma Elizabeth who will be four years old next month.”

It was also Frederick who relayed the news of Ellen’s final illness. In a letter dated December 13,1890, he told Mrs. Davis, “I am very sorry to say that Ellen will not be able to come to you for some time yet. She is quite sick and has been sick for three weeks with the same complaint as when you was here.” Frederick did not know it, but Ellen would die later that day.

According to the death certificate, she died from rheumatism and acute endocarditis (an inflammation of the heart lining and valves). Although Ellen Barnes McGinnis never learned to read or write, her daughter Emma Elizabeth went on to become a teacher in Washington, D.C., as did her granddaughter Ellen (Mary Ann’s child). These two half-sisters made their home together for a time.

We may never know the full story of Ellen Barnes McGinnis, but we know more now than we did. She is no longer just a person who worked in the Confederate White House but someone whose life embodied all the complexities, struggles, and promise of this transitional period.

Kelly Hancock is the Museum’s Public Programs Manager. She has been leading tours of the restored White House of the Confederacy since 1998.