Today we have visits to a number of houses scheduled as there are loads of antebellum houses that were not damaged during the civil war and that have subsequently either been opened to the public or turned into hotels that provide access to the houses via guided tour. We later found out that there are over 300 antebellum houses although it wasn’t clear how many we could have visited if we wanted to! Because access to the houses is via a tour and these only go at set times we decided to set off a bit earlier, we also decided to buy tickets for the hop on hop off bus which we had originally planned to use tomorrow but as it turns out it only costs an additional $2 for a two day ticket so we thought we would go for broke and get tickets for both days. Having brought the bus tickets we then went off to Rosalie which is very close to the hotel. This is owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution who own a lot of the properties in this area. When we were in Jackson we had been told to have our wallets ready as ‘those ladies sure know how to part you from your money’ and it turned out to be the case but it does at least mean that they are well looked after. In 1716 the French built a fort on the bluffs of Natchez and named it Rosalie, In 1820 Peter Little who came to Natchez in 1798 at the age of 17 purchased this portion of land to build his home, he also brought land in Louisiana. He frequently used the ferry boat at Natchez Under the Hill to cross the river to check on his Louisiana land, he became good friends with the ferry boat owner who unfortunately died in the 1806 outbreak of yellow fever. When his wife also contracted the disease she asked Peter to look after their daughter Eliza. He agreed and when she ultimately died Peter took Eliza in and married her. At the time he was 25 and she was 14 so it was in name only. He sent her to school in Baltimore and she returned a very educated and sophisticated young lady. It is said that while she was away at school they fell in love and they moved into their new home in 1823. They were married for 45 years, and although they never had children of their own, they did found the Natchez Children’s Home and a number of those children lived at Rosalie. Eliza contracted yellow fever and died when she was 60, a few years later Peter died without a valid will which caused the house to be sold. In 1857 Mr and Mrs Andrew Wilson brought the house, again they didn’t have children of their own but took in orphaned children, they ultimately adopted one, Fannie McMurty, she married Captain Stephen Rumble and Rosalie became their home where they had six children. In 1938 due to hard times daughters of Stephen and Fannie sold the house to the Daughters of the American Revolution. The two daughters continued to live in the house giving daily tours until they passed away, Annie, the younger daughter, was 101 when she died. They don’t have many of the original items from the house but they have made each of the rooms look as they would have in the 1800s, we walked round all of the rooms and upstairs to the bedrooms. We finished by heading out the back to the Kitchen which is linked to the house by a covered walkway and there is a very tall table below the window to the dining room which is where the food was put ready to be served. It was a lovely house but such a shame we couldn’t take photos. We walked around the gardens then out into the road where there was a sign and a house from the days when the fort was here, founded on 3rd August 1716 it was created as a French colonial bulkhead that has led to the oldest permanent settlement on the lower Mississippi. From here we walked to William Johnsons House. In the mid-1800s Natchez had about 3,000 whites, 1,600 black slaves and 200 free blacked who were mostly mulatto or mixed race. William Johnson was one of the free people of colour who owned a brick structured building which contained both rented retail shop space and the families home. He was the son of a mulatto slave woman in Natchez, at the age of eleven, William was emancipated by his white slave owner who it is assumed was his father, Williams mother and sister had been freed a few years earlier. William trained as a barber and opened his first barber shop in Natchez, he eventually opened three barber ships and a bathhouse. Clients received services from Johnson himself, free blacks hired by him, apprentices or from slaves owned by Johnson. Interestingly state laws concerning property ownership didn’t prohibit free people from owning slaves, even if that person had previously been a slave. Apart from the obvious, the unique thing about William was that he kept diaries over 16 years beginning in 1835 and ending with his death in 1851. He didn’t ever talk about his views on slavery either as one himself or as a slave owner but he did document the parties, parades, fires, natural disasters and political rallies that took place during his lifetime. From here we walked towards Magnolia Hall passing Governor Holmes house, which was built in 1794 for the 1st Governor of Mississippi and Texada which is considered to be the first brick building constructed in Natchez and is believed to have been built between 1798 and 1805, the house also served as Mississippi’s first state Capitol from 1817-1829. Our next house was Magnolia Hall which was built in 1858 as the residence of Thomas Henderson, who was a planter, merchant and cotton broker. The mansion is on the site of his previous house, Pleasant Hill, apparently in the 19th century moving houses, literally was quite commonplace and was generally accomplished by rolling the building on logs pulled by oxen, once he had moved his old house work began on Magnolia Hall. Interestingly he built the house in 1860 when he was a widower and sixty years old, although his sons John and Thomas junior lived in the house, Thomas died in 1863 after only 3 years in the house. Descendants of the Henderson family have donated original furnishings and they have quite a lot of furniture in the house and better still they let you take pictures. From here we walked to Temple B’nai Israel which was built in 1905 to replace the first synagogue which was built in 1872 but burned down in 1904, this was the oldest Jewish congregation in Mississippi founded in 1843. It has what look like impressive stain glass windows, they are currently restoring the outside of the building so we saw a number of people walking round the roof. From here we walked through Memorial Park to St Mary’s Basilica, Memorial Park was once the site of the city’s earlier cemetery. In 1822 most of the burials were re-interred at the current Natchez city cemetery. St Mary’s Basilica is the only church built as a cathedral in the state and the oldest Catholic building still in use in Mississippi, the church received its first blessing in 1843. We walked down the road to King’s Tavern which had long been regarded as the oldest building in Natchez. The sign outside suggests that it was a Tavern, stage stop and mail station at the end of Natchez Trace and was standing before 1789. Our final house of the day was another one belonging to the Daughters of the Revolution, Stanton Hall. In 1857 cotton merchant Frederick Stanton began construction on his dream home, a Greek Revival style mansion that was known as Belfast. The building covered a whole city block and was furnished with marble and mantel pieces from New York, gasoline’s from Philadelphia and immense mirrors from France, which are 14 feet by 10 feet. The ground floor has a ceiling hight of 17 feet and the upper floors 14 feet. The house was completed a couple of months before Stanton’s death in 1859, although the family remained in residence until 1894. It is considered by many to be the grandest of the Natchez mansions and I can see why. After walking round all of these houses, we went and got some lunch then finally did a circuit on the hop on hop off bus tour, it was funny as they had been told we had brought tickets this morning and I think they had been driving round all day empty waiting for us to arrive! The penultimate stop is our hotel so we got off there and came up to the room to double check what we plan to do tomorrow.
