The good news is that the storm we had yesterday has passed us by and it is nice again today so we continued our exploration of the state Capitals as Jackson is the state Capital of Mississippi. We had a walk around the historic district which started at the old state Capitol building, but we got a bit lost on the way down to downtown Jackson which meant that it took us about an hour to get downtown, this wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that everyone is so chatty! We went into the Capitol building but didn’t go round it as the lady on the desk, after she had talked to us for about 15 minutes asked if we had been to the Governors Mansion which we planned to do but hadn’t done yet so she suggested we did the Capitol building later and went to the mansion now as the last tour of the day is at 11:00 and it was just gone 10:30 when we got to the Capitol building. So we had a look at one room then set off for the Governors Mansion. We were met at the gate by the security guard who after a bit more of a chat rang the house so that the door was open when we walked up the front steps. The mansion is the second oldest continuously occupied governor’s residence in America. It was built in 1841 at a cost of approximately $50,000. It was designed by the same person as the Capitol building, William Nichols of Bath, England, in the Greek Revival style. During the latter part of the 19th century it fell into a state of disrepair and many people wanted to demolish it, but it was argued that Grant didn’t demolish it when he stayed here during the Civil War then it shouldn’t be demolished so $30,000 was allocated for renovation in 1908. This was completed in 1909 and included a building of a family annex. Despite the renovation in 1909, by 1972 further work was required and this time a major renovation programme costing $2.7 million was carried out, during this time historical records were consulted to make sure all renovations and furniture were in keeping with the period. It’s nice that it it is still used although the family live in the back of the house in the new annex, the main part of the house is still used for entertaining. Unfortunately this also means that we couldn’t take any photos of the house and the rooms were really impressive. On the ground floor there are two reception rooms on each side, two on the right were painted yellow and are the reception room and the dining room, on the left they are both painted red and are the withdrawing rooms for men and women. It was really nice and wasn’t to cluttered but the lady that showed us round said that they had been told that there was probably too much furniture in the rooms considering the period. Upstairs were four bedrooms and a sitting area in the hall, three of these were very impressive with four poster bed and very rare furniture but one of the rooms seemed quite plain, they called this the pumpkin room because of the colour on the walls, it had great views over the garden but seemed a lot smaller than the other rooms. One of the bedrooms the Cream one has been used by some famous visitors such as John F Kennedy Jr who came to stay in 1957 when he was trying to get support for his presidential campaign. After we finished our tour which actually took almost an hour and a half rather than the standard hour we went back to the Capitol building after having a further chat to the very friendly security guard. We walked back up to the Capitol building and continued our walk round. This was built in 1839 and is the oldest building in Jackson. It was used for the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government until 1903 when the New Capitol was built. It was used as offices then in 1961 became a museum. It was closed in 2005 after the building was damaged in Hurricane Katrina. The museum reopened in 2009 after the building was restored. Mississippi has had four constitutions since it became a state. Two before the Civil War and two after. The 1868 Constitution is considered very democratic because it extended the right to vote to all men. The 1890 Constitution (still in use today although much changed) restricted the right to vote! The governor is a relatively weak position in Mississippi, in part because the other executive officers are elected not appointed. During the civil war the government was forced to meet in other cities but the Old Capitol was centre to a number of political events. In 1861 the delegates voted 83 to 15 to secede. Seven years later in 1868, 100 delegates including 16 African Americans would meet to write a new constitution which restricted the right to vote for coloured men. They had a library which by tradition was manned by a woman who was appointed by the keeper of the keys although this was changed later when the position was still held by a woman but she applied for the job rather than being appointed. Once we had finished walking around we managed to escape the building without being caught by the very helpful lady on the desk. We did the Historic Jackson Walking tour we had found which was around the original boundaries of the city from the 1840s, we walked up to the new State Capitol but we decided not to go in as we have been in quite a few, instead we walked back to the hotel and went for something to eat then came back and relaxed. Tomorrow we move on to Natchez after a few stops on the way.
