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Florence Warfield Sillers

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Florence Warfield Sillers
BornFlorence Carson Warfield
(1869-09-25)September 25, 1869
Boonville, Missouri
United States
DiedApril 5, 1958(1958-04-05) (aged 88)
Resting placeBeulah Cemetery
Beulah, Mississippi
Occupation
  • historian
  • socialite
Notable worksHistory of Bolivar County, Mississippi
SpouseWalter Sillers
Children6 (including Walter and Florence)
ParentsElisha Warfield
Mary Anderson Carson

Florence Carson Warfield Sillers (September 25, 1869 – April 5, 1958) was an American socialite and historian. A member of an influential American family with colonial ties, Sillers was a prominent figure of Mississippi society and was a founding member of the Mississippi Delta Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She was a member of multiple lineage and historical societies including the Colonial Dames of America, the National Society Magna Charta Dames and Barons, and the Mississippi Historical Society. In 1948 she published the History of Bolivar County, Mississippi, a book on the history of Bolivar County that glorified the Confederacy and contributed to the Lost Cause narrative.

Biography

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Sillers was born on September 25, 1869, in Booneville, Missouri, and grew up in Louisiana and Mississippi.[1] She was the daughter of Colonel Elisha Warfield and Mary Anderson Carson.[2][1] Her father, a planter who owned a plantation in Bolivar County, Mississippi, near Rosedale, served as a Confederate Officer in the 2nd Arkansas Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War.[3][4] Her paternal ancestors had come from Great Britain to the Province of Maryland in the 17th century.[3][1][5] Sillers was the great-granddaughter of the physician and horse-breeder Elisha Warfield and a grandniece of the suffragist Mary Jane Warfield Clay.[3]

In 1887, at the age of seventeen, she married Walter Sillers, a lawyer and member of a prominent Mississippi Delta family, and had six children; Anna Farrar Sillers, Mary Sillers Skinner, Florence Sillers Ogden, Walter Sillers Jr., Evelyn Sillers Pearson, and Lillian Burrill Sillers Holleman.[2][1] She was his second wife.[6] Her husband owned several plantations in Bolivar County and was a Mississippi Democratic executive committee member.[7] She lived with her family in a Victorian style mansion on Levee Street in Rosedale.[7]

As a prominent society figure in Mississippi, Sillers was member of multiple social societies and civic organizations including local chapters of the Colonial Dames of America, American Farm Bureau Federation, American Red Cross, Mississippi Delta Council, and the Rosedale Country Club.[8] She was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and served as treasurer of the King's Daughters Hospital of Rosedale for twenty years.[8] She was also a member of the Texas State Historical Association and the Mississippi Historical Society.[8] Sillers was a founding member of the Mississippi Delta Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.[2] She later served as regent of the Chapter.[9] In 1948 Sillers authored a book on the history of Bolivar County, titled History of Bolivar County, Mississippi,[10] that glorified the Antebellum South and the Confederate States of America.[11][12][13] Sillers was also a member of the National Society Magna Charta Dames and Barons, a society for descendants of signers of Magna Carta.[14]

Sillers died on April 5, 1958, and is buried at Beulah Cemetery in Beulah, Mississippi.[15][16]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d "Clipped From Clarion-Ledger". Clarion-Ledger. July 30, 1936. p. 8 – via newspapers.com.
  2. ^ a b c "Florence Warfield Sillers". July 10, 2009.
  3. ^ a b c "Warfield Family History". July 10, 2009.
  4. ^ History, Mississippi Department of Archives and (July 15, 1917). "The Official and Statistical Register of the State of Mississippi". Department of Archives and History – via Google Books.
  5. ^ "Richard Warfield, Progenitor of the Warfield Family in Maryland". Snowden and Warfield Family Genealogy Website. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
  6. ^ "Data" (PDF). www.apps.mdah.ms.gov. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
  7. ^ a b "Walter Sillers and His Fifty Years Inside Mississippi Politics | Mississippi History Now". mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us. Archived from the original on October 21, 2020. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
  8. ^ a b c "Collection Title: Florence Warfield Sillers Collection Number". studylib.net. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
  9. ^ "Info" (PDF). msgw.org. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
  10. ^ Pratt, Dorothy Overstreet (November 6, 2017). Sowing the Wind: The Mississippi Constitutional Convention of 1890. Univ. Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9781496815491 – via Google Books.
  11. ^ "Ogden, Florence Sillers". Mississippi Encyclopedia.
  12. ^ Adams, Jane; Gorton, D. (May 2006). "Confederate Lane:Class, race, and ethnicity in the Mississippi Delta" (PDF). American Ethnologist. 33 (2): 288–309. doi:10.1525/ae.2006.33.2.288.
  13. ^ Ownby, Ted; Wilson, Charles Reagan; Abadie, Ann J.; Lindsey, Odie; Jr, James G. Thomas (May 25, 2017). The Mississippi Encyclopedia. Univ. Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9781496811592 – via Google Books.
  14. ^ "Deceased Dames Maiden Alpha V to Z". www.magnacharta.org.
  15. ^ "Forrest County, MS Cemeteries". genealogytrails.com.
  16. ^ "Bolivar County MsArchives Cemeteries.....Beulah Cemetery, Part 1". USGW Archives. Archived from the original on August 4, 2020. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
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