United Daughters of the Confederacy Records, 1915-1953

Morton Museum of Collierville History

Collierville, West Tennessee

Selected by Executive Director Neecole Gregory

The Collierville chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy created this series of records in the decades following the Civil War. These women sought to memorialize their loved ones and tell their own stories about the antebellum South, which resulted in the Lost Cause myth. These complicated records show the process of memory and meaning making and are examples of what can happen when private grief influences public narratives. For museum director Neecole Gregory these records represent a setback in creating a more perfect union and also offer a lesson. In this video, she explains what these documents tell us and what we can learn from them.