The Radford Heritage Foundation is pleased to announce that acclaimed historian William C. “Jack” Davis will give his talk, “Love Among the Ruins: The Confederate Courtship of Gen. G.C. Wharton and Nannie Wharton,” at 6:30 Tuesday, April 4.
The talk will take place in the General District Courtroom in the Radford Municipal Building. It follows the ribbon cutting for the Glencoe Mansion, earlier in the evening.
Davis’s talk is based on one of the most unusual correspondences to survive from the Civil War, more than 500 letters 1863-1865 between Confederate General Gabriel C. Wharton and his 19-year-old bride “Nannie” Radford, daughter of the city’s patriarch Dr. John B. Radford.
Almost daily they wrote to each other about everything–their growing love for each other, Nannie’s friends and relatives in the vicinity, the failing fortunes of the Confederacy, generals and politicians, their expected child, and their hopes for their future life together.
In the years after the war General Wharton and Nannie constructed the Glencoe Mansion, which remained in family hands until 1981.
William C. Davis, formerly Director of Virginia Tech’s Center for Civil War Studies, spent 31 years in editorial management in the publishing industry, consulted for numerous film and television productions, and was senior advisor for the A&E and History Channel series “Civil War Journal.”
Davis is the author of more than 50 books, most recently Crucible of Command and Inventing Loreta Velasquez.
He is the only four-time winner of the Jefferson Davis Award of the Museum of the Confederacy for works on the Civil War and Confederacy.
Everyone is welcome to attend. There is no admission charge.
— Scott Gardner
