Natchez, Mississippi

February 7, 2013

This photo was taken at sunset out over the great Mississippi River; this bridge links Natchez, Mississippi with Vidalia, Louisiana.

In the morning I took this photo in the opposite direction.

You can see Natchez is an old American town filled with history. Natchez had one of the busiest slave markets in the south and thousands of slaves worked on the local plantations, creating one of the wealthiest pre-war towns in the country.

Only one plantation home of the several in Natchez, Melrose, run by the National Park Service, has recreated slave quarters as a reminder of the source of its original affluence. The Ranger (below) was an enthusiastic historian using his iPad as a teaching tool.

The original owner of Melrose arrived in Natchez in the mid-1820s, established a profitable law practice, won election to the state legislature, married into a respectable local family, and acquired the first of FIVE plantations and slaves. In 1849 John McMurran and family moved into this house named Melrose and considered by many to be the finest home in all of the Natchez region. They furnished their home with "all that fine taste and a full purse" could provide.

Over the dining room table hung a magnificent mahogany "punkah" that, when operated by a slave, shooed flies away from the food. (Hmm, never heard of a fly swatter, I guess.) Most rooms were connected to bells hanging on the back of the house by rope pulls or small cranks. These bells summoned the domestic slaves quartered in the upper floors of the two brick dependency buildings just behind the main house. A hidden hallway in the rear of the first floor provided for discrete movement of house slaves. The ideal southern household was one in which the slaves were rarely seen but always ready to serve.

Training began early with children as young as six often tasked with watching the infants and toddlers of other slaves while parents worked. By the age of eight, children spent their day working with their parents and others to learn the skills required to serve their master.

Melrose was acquired by the National Park Service in 1990.

I decided to have a look at a privately-owned (owned by Pilgrimage Garden Club) antebellum mansion in Natchez that the Ranger mentioned, Longwood. This is the largest octagonal house in America, designed in 1859 in the "Oriental Villa" style, for a wealthy cotton planter Haller Nutt by a Philadelphia architect. Six stories high, it is crowned by a Byzantine-Moorish dome with a 24 foot high finial. Work progressed until April, 1861 when the Civil War began, and the Philadelphia craftsmen dropped their tools and fled North. The family had to live in the basement level (it was disorienting walking around that octagonal floor plan). Rich Mr. Nutt died in 1864 and left wife and eight kids without means to finish the place. They lived in the basement until her death in 1897.

No photos allowed inside.

Longwood floor plan.

This is the family graveyard.