Upper Fan area Estate Sale of Clifford Dowdey family - Richmond writer

3 Day On-site Estate Sale of the Clifford Dowdey Family 

Dowdey (1904-1979) was an award-winning novelist of international repute (best seller Bugles Blow No More, 1936) and later known for his Civil War histories of General Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia (Lee’s Last Campaign, The Seven Days, Lee biography). Dowdey was born in Richmond, but until the late 1940s, lived and worked in New York City, Florida, Los Angeles (where he was a screenwriter), and Arizona. The Fan District house has been in the Dowdey family since the early 1940s when Dowdey purchased the house for his mother and contains hundreds of items, many pre-1960, from the families of Clifford Dowdey, his wife Frances Wilson Dowdey (1920-1970) who predeceased him, and Carolyn Dunaway, his widow, who died in 2013.

Although most of Clifford and Frances Wilson Dowdey’s personal and professional papers and photographs are housed in the University of Virginia Special Collections, many possessions relating to their lives are available. These include the typewriter Dowdey used to write his later books, articles, and screenplays and the Confederate items Dowdey found when researching in the Virginia Civil War battlefields. Better known as an editor and a clinical psychologist, Frances Wilson Dowdey was also a painter, and the last two of Frances Dowdey’s late paintings are on view.

The life of Carolyn Dunaway, Dowdey’s widow, is reflected in the many writings on Christianity, travel (once or twice a year, she participated in Biblical archeological digs in Jordan and Israel), American and European history, and cats.

Please join us for this wonderful sale which represents local Richmond history and unique treasures that can be yours at the most fair prices. The house will go be available for sale soon after the estate sale. See you soon!  Not all pictures are listed below - more pictures can be viewed online on our site:  www.beckestates.com