A nail and piece of slate roof, approx. 5.5 x 6.5 in., from Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis' postwar home in Biloxi, Mississippi. Beauvoir, built in 1848, was purchased by a wealthy planter Samuel Dorsey in 1873. Dorsey died two years later and his widow, sympathetic to the financial difficulties of former Confederate President Davis, invited him to live in a cottage on the grounds. Ms. Dorsey left the estate to Davis when she died in 1879, and he lived there until his death in 1889. Beauvoir was then transferred to the Mississippi chapter of the SCV to be used as a home for elderly Confederate veterans and as a memorial to Davis, and has since been designated a National Historic Landmark. It was severely damaged by hurricanes Camille in 1969 and Katrina in 2005, the latter destroying the newly built Jefferson Davis Presidential Library and nearly half if its collection.