PBA Galleries

Broadside, 53.5x34.5 cm. (21x13½"). Text printed in four columns within a black rule border.

Presentation from the author in upper margin, several holograph corrections in her hand. Docketing note on verso in a different hand, "Obituary notice of my Cousin Princess Achille Murat by Mrs. Long of Tallahasse, Fla." After Waterloo, Achille Murat, Crown Prince of Naples and Napoleon's nephew, immigrated to the United States, settled in Florida Territory, where he ran a cotton slave plantation, served as a Colonel of a backwoods regiment during the Seminole War, and married Catharine D. Willis of Virginia, George Washington's great grand-niece. He died in 1847 but his widow lived on in Florida through the Civil War while being accorded the title of Princess at the Court of Napoleon III. Upon her death in 1867, this obituary was written by her close friend and fellow Confederate stalwart Ellen Call Long (1825-1905) whose father had been Territorial Governor of Florida and Murat's close friend. There is no record of where - or if - this obituary was published before it was reprinted in the Florida Historical Society quarterly of 1909 and again in book form in 1931. Two biographies of Murat cite only the much later reprints. This appears to be the only existing copy of the original 1867 broadside printing - which includes the author's handwritten corrections, which were not incorporated in the later reprints.