Notorious Woman: The Celebrated Case of Myra Clark Gaines (Southern Biography Series)

The legal crusade of Myra Clark Gaines (1804?-1885) has all the trappings of classical melodrama--a lost heir, a missing will, an illicit relationship, a questionable marriage, a bigamous husband, and a murder. For half a century the daughter of New Orleans millionaire Daniel Clark struggled to justify her claim to his enormous fortune in a case that captivated the nineteenth-century public. Elizabeth Urban Alexander taps voluminous court records and letters to unravel the twists and turns of Gaines's litigation and reveal the truth behind the mysterious saga of this notorious woman. Myra, the daughter of real estate heir Clark and Zulume Carriere, a beautiful young Frenchwoman, was raised by friends of Clark and kept ignorant of her real parentage until 1832, when she discovered her true lineage in letters among her foster father's papers. She thereupon returned to Louisiana with tales of a lost will and a secret marriage between Clark and Carriere and claimed to be Clark's missing he