Virginia Clay-Clopton

Born in 1825, Virginia Clay-Clopton was known in her early years as Virginia Tunstall and later as Virginia Clay through her marriage to Alabama politician Clement Claiborne Clay. As the wife of a U.S. senator, she spent time in Washington, D.C., where she became known as a gifted political hostess with a close view of the people and tensions that shaped the years before the Civil War.

After the war, her life changed dramatically. She was imprisoned for a time after her husband was accused in the investigation following Abraham Lincoln's assassination, and she later rebuilt her public role through writing and civic work. In Alabama, she became active in efforts connected with women's education and public life.

She is best remembered for her memoir A Belle of the Fifties, published late in life, which offers a lively firsthand account of elite Southern society, politics, and upheaval in the nineteenth century. She died in 1915, leaving behind a record valued both for its storytelling and for its window into a complicated period of American history.