Confederate Centennial Colloquium

Item

Legacies Classification
Memorial Event
Memorial Type
Lecture Series
Memorial Context
Lost Cause
Memorialized Subject
Walker, Georgiana Gholson
Walker, Gerard S.
Title
Confederate Centennial Colloquium
Background and Context
In 1963, Mills Memorial Library dedicated its annual “Book-A-Year” colloquium to Gerard S. Walker (’52), a Rollins alumnus and owner of his grandmother’s Civil War era journal. Walker received the journal on loan from his relative Helena Randolph Walker in 1951 and used it as the basis for historical research at Rollins College. Collaborating with Dr. Alfred J. Hanna, Chairman of the Rollins History Department and Vice-President of the College, the “Walker Journal” project fizzled out during Walker’s time at Rollins. In 1959, however, the project came to Dwight Franklin Henderson, a student pursuing a master’s in history at the University of Texas. The book was finally published in 1963 by the Confederate Publishing Company in Tuscaloosa, AL.

Georgiana Gholson Walker (1833–1904) was a Confederate loyalist and close associate to Varina Davis, wife of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In her journal, Walker praised the Confederate states and expressed support for the institution of slavery. Following the war, Walker relocated to Leamington in Warwickshire, England. Her entries from this period reflected her undying support for the Confederate States. She and her family moved to Staten Island in 1883, where she died in 1904 without ever renouncing the Confederate States.

In his 1963 inscription to a copy gifted to Rollins College, Gerard S. Walker wrote, “For the library, where the Walker Journal Project happily started.”
Creator/Participating Person(s)
Walker, Gerard S.
Hanna, Alfred Jackson
Date created, installed or dedicated
October 26, 1963
Historical Period
1945-1976: Era of Civil Rights Movement and resistance to Civil Rights Movement
Location: Institution, City, State
Rollins College; Winter Park, Florida
Learn More About this Subject
The Private Journal of Georgiana Gholson Walker 1862–1865, with Selections from the Post-War Years, 1865–1876. Confederate Centennial Studies. Tuscaloosa, AL: Confederate Publishing Company, 1963). edited by Dwight Franklin Henderson

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