When Marion Isabelle Twiggs, the daughter of United States Army General David E. Twiggs, the commander of the United States forces in Texas, first met one of his staff officers, Colonel Abraham C. Myers, she immediately fell in love, sparking a romance that would leave a legacy in the naming of Fort Myers, Florida. Shortly after, because of ongoing conflicts with the Seminole Indians in Florida, her father and Myers were moved to Florida. Twiggs was responsible for leading the troops at Fort Brooke, now known as Tampa Bay, Florida, while Myers became the chief quartermaster. While at Fort Brooke, Abraham, and Marion continued their romance and became engaged. Twiggs supported their engagement, even though Myers was 39 and his daughter was only 13.
A Fort Named for a Future Son-in-Law
On February 14th, 1850, the War Department instructed Twiggs to build a fort on the Caloosahatchee River, on the site of an earlier post. He named it Fort Myers, after Abraham C. Myers, “to show respect for his future son-in-law and make his daughter happy.” The City of Fort Myers, Florida, takes its name from that 1850 fort.
The fort was an engagement gift, not a wedding gift. The couple married later in the 1850s, and their children followed: Elizabeth Twiggs “Lily” Myers; William Heyward Myers, born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1856; Marion Isabelle Myers; and, years later, John Twiggs Myers.
Abraham C. Myers: Washington, War, and Exile
Several years later and before the Civil War, Myers was posted to Washington. Marion “was the reigning queen at Willard’s and a favored guest at every fashionable house. Her dancing was perfect, her tact equal to it, and her beauty even more exceptional“.
Like his father-in-law, who turned over the Federal forces under his control in Texas to the Confederacy at the start of the Civil War, Myers sided with the South. Serving as quartermaster in New Orleans, he surrendered the quartermaster and commissary stores in his charge to Louisiana officials on January 28, 1861, and resigned from the U.S. Army the same day. He became the Confederacy’s first Quartermaster General in 1861.
Hindered by a shortage of money and worn-out railroads, Myers struggled to keep the Confederate armies supplied, and complaints reached President Jefferson Davis. In August 1863, Davis named Alexander Lawton to replace him. Historian Robert N. Rosen notes that Davis had a personal grievance as well: Marion was reported to have insulted Varina Davis, the president’s wife, with a disparaging remark. Angry at his treatment, Myers later took his family to Europe. They lived in Wiesbaden, Germany, where John Twiggs Myers was born in 1871, and returned to the United States in 1876.
John Twiggs Myers became the most famous of the four children. Born on January 29, 1871, he joined the Marine Corps and, during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, led the small Marine guard that defended the American legation in Peking, where he was wounded by a spear. He served in the Philippines, took part in the expeditions to Santo Domingo in 1912 and Cuba in 1913, and later commanded the 1st Marine Brigade in Haiti. He retired as a major general in 1934 and was advanced to lieutenant general on the retired list in 1942. He died on April 17, 1952, and rests in Arlington National Cemetery.
Abraham C. Myers died in Washington in 1889 and rests in St. Paul’s Cemetery. When Marion died on November 12, 1893, she was buried beside the husband who had captivated her in her youth in Texas in the late 1840s.
The Next Generation: Lily Myers, the Chalmers Family, and Willie Fendall
The story of Abraham C. Myers does not end with the fort. His daughter Lily Myers married Algernon Coleman Chalmers, the son of David Chalmers and Sarah Embry Coleman, sometime before 1880. They had three children: Algernon Coleman Chalmers Jr. (1880-1923), who died in Asheville, North Carolina, and was brought home to St. Paul’s; Marion Twiggs Chalmers (1881-1964), later Mrs. Herbert, who rests in Ivy Hill Cemetery; and Lieutenant Commander David Twiggs Chalmers of the U.S. Navy (1887-1929), who died in Denver and lies in Arlington National Cemetery. Algernon Sr. died in 1890, in his early thirties, leaving Lily a widow with three young children.
On November 20, 1902, Lily married again. Her second husband was William Eaches “Willie” Fendall (1856-1936), son of Townshend Dade Fendall and Eliza Eaches Fendall of Alexandria. Willie came from one of the town’s best-known families. His great-grandfather, Benjamin Fendall II, was the brother of Philip Richard Fendall I, who built the Lee-Fendall House on Oronoco Street, which makes Willie the great-grandnephew of the house’s builder. The wedding took place at 211 South St. Asaph Street, the home of Willie’s sister, Nannie Lee Fendall Tackett. The couple settled at 219 South Alfred Street, a house Willie claimed as his own.
Willie was christened at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in 1857 and practiced law. His own family remembered him as charming: good-looking, with a fine voice and a way with the ladies. They also remembered him as a “cad” and a “bounder” who went through a great deal of family money.
Lily died on February 24, 1910, and was buried at St. Paul’s. In January 1915, Willie married another widow, Katherine Larned “Kitty” Atterbury Brastow, in Washington. That summer, Kitty advanced him $5,000 to repair and improve the South Alfred Street house, believing, as she later told the court, that he was its sole owner.
The Family Goes to Court
He was not. On April 3, 1917, the day after President Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany, Willie filed his answer to a lawsuit brought by his older brother, Benjamin Truman Fendall. Benjamin, a Baltimore engineer, wanted the family’s three Alexandria properties divided: 309 Prince Street, 219 South Alfred Street, and the old family house at the northeast corner of Fairfax and Wilkes Streets. Nannie joined the fight with a grievance of her own. She and her late husband, John Ford Tackett, had entrusted money to Willie to invest, and none of it had come back.
Willie insisted that his father had deeded the South Alfred Street lot to him around 1893, that the deed had burned in a fire at his office, and that he had simply neglected to record it. The same fire, he said, had destroyed the receipts that would have accounted for the rents.
The court was not persuaded. In October 1918, it ruled that the properties could not be divided and ordered them sold, with the proceeds shared among those entitled. On October 1, 1919, Kitty filed a petition of her own, seeking the return of her $5,000. That same day, the court rejected Willie’s claim to sole ownership of 219 South Alfred Street.
The fight had come a long way from the fort that once honored Abraham C. Myers. Benjamin did not mince words. Writing to Nannie in June 1921, he called his brother a scoundrel and a wretch and told her plainly that “your money has been taken from you by a trick.” Benjamin died in Baltimore in 1923, but his widow, Florence, pressed the case forward. In the end, Willie was compelled to give up the bonds and other property he held, the South Alfred Street house sold for $7,500, and the Fairfax and Wilkes Street property for $1,000. Nannie received about $4,000, only a fraction of what she had lost. The sales were not complete until more than a dozen years after the court’s first ruling.
Family memory proved kinder than the court record. In a 1967 interview, Nannie’s daughter, Sophie Tackett Blanton, remembered that her mother had always stood up for Willie, and she grew emotional defending him even then. Yet Sophie’s own letters from 1917 bristle at Kitty, and Uncle Will did not attend Sophie’s wedding at St. Paul’s Church in January 1918.
Willie died on March 27, 1936. His brief obituary named his parents and his wife and noted that he had once practiced law. He rests in St. Paul’s Cemetery, as do Lily and her parents, Abraham and Marion Myers.
How This Story Surfaced
This chapter came to light at the Lee-Fendall House Museum, which received a box of Chalmers family letters years ago. In the fall of 2026, the museum’s Collections Management Intern, Alice Brown, began transcribing and cataloging the letters. To help untangle the family relationships, she drew a family tree by hand.
When she showed me her drawing, I immediately recognized the people and their connections. I owned a copy of Letters to Virginia by Barb Winters, which documents the Fendall family and its complicated history, including the bitter legal disputes involving William Eaches “Willie” Fendall. Alice’s work provided the missing connection between the Myers family and the Fendalls, allowing me to expand this story, first published in October 2022, to include another generation of family history.
| Gen. A.C. Myers died June 20, 1889 Graduated West Point, 1833 Col. U.S.A 1860 O.M.G.G. S.A. 1861 MARION MYERS daughter of Gen. David E. Twiggs, U.S.A. died Nov. 12, 1893 Then are they glad, because they are at rest, and he bringers them unto the heaven were they would be | ABRAHAM C. MYERS Colonel Q. M. General Confederate States Army May 14, 1811 – June 29, 1889 |
Note: The two stones give different death dates for Abraham Myers, June 20 and June 29, 1889. Published sources are also divided.
Sources of Information
DeLeon, T.C. Belles, Beaux and Brains of the ’60s. G. W. Dillingham Company. New York. 1909.
Dennee, Timothy J. A History of 219 South Alfred Street. 2000. Cited in Winters, Letters to Virginia.
Fendall family interview, conducted by Col. Bill Gray Fendall at the home of Fendall Marbury III, 1967. Unpublished family notes.
Hakenson, Donald C. This Forgotten Land Volume II, Biographical Sketches of Confederate Veterans Buried in Alexandria, Virginia. Donald Hakenson. Alexandria, Virginia. 2011.
Pippenger, Wesley E. Tombstone Inscriptions of Alexandria, Virginia (Vol 5). Berwyn Heights. MD. Heritage Books. 2014.
Rosen, Robert N. The Jewish Confederates. University of South Carolina Press. Columbia, South Carolina. 2000.
Winters, Barb. Letters to Virginia. Acclaim Press. Morley, MO. 2010.
Official website of The City of Fort Myers, Florida. Accessed March 2022.
“Abraham Myers.” Wikipedia. Accessed October 2026.
“John Twiggs Myers.” Wikipedia. Accessed October 2026.