Temple B'nai Israel, Natchez, Mississippi

Photo by Cappy Stahlman

 Built in 1872, B'nai Israel serves only a handful of congregants.  To read the history of this beautiful building, go to:  http://www.isjl.org/history/archive/ms/HistoryofBnaiIsraelNatchez.htm

SSssssssspringtime.

The dogs were barking madly one day last week.  I went out to see what it was.  It was this fellow on the porch, buzzing frantically and having a particularly bad day.

I don't like killing anything.  Not even snakes.  They're just trying to get by like everybody else.  If he'd been further down the drive I would've left him alone. But all the dogs were surrounding him and sooner or later, one would've gotten bitten.  So I grabbed my dad and my camera and took a picture before said father dispatched him with a pistol filled with bird shot.

He was big.  About four and a half feet.  Ten rattles and a button, which we placed in the calling-card tray by the door with half a dozen others.  We think it's welcoming.  Don't you?  Ha!

Unable to find a yardstick to measure him with, I settled on a cane.  In fact, I'm pretty sure he's a cane rattler.  Be careful out there in this warm weather.

By the way, those of you who follow this blog will notice it's changed in appearance.  I was playing with templates today and lost my old template.  I can't figure out how to get it back.  I'll be working on trying to create something attractive and easy on the eyes.  If you see something you particularly like, take a screenshot and let me know.

Cheers.

Childhood memory resurfaces...in a cast-iron coffin

A guest blog today by a new friend, Ann Dupont from Shreveport, Louisiana.

        The story I am about to share is true, historical and — some might say — rather dark. The fact that it led me up the front steps to Shantybellum.com to ring the doorbell and ask about pictures of magnolia trees seems a bit funny now but I'’ll always consider meeting Elodie Pritchartt to be my personal legacy from a mysterious young woman who died almost 200 years ago.

        I was 9 years old, living in Monroe, Louisiana, in 1955. No one had ever heard of cell phones back then; no one carried a camera. Something happened one day that those who knew about firsthand probably never forgot, but nobody else ever knew anything about it unless they happened to read one account in the local newspaper. It happened one day and was pretty much over and done with the next, but the memory has haunted my thoughts for over 55 years.

—

        My father was working on the campus of what was then called Northeast Louisiana State College. Nearby a construction crew laying a water line to a home being constructed along Bayou DeSiard, off Lakeshore Drive, accidently hit a brick tomb or crypt and the entire enclosure collapsed, revealing a cast-iron casket which had a glass viewing window, protected by a removable cast-iron plate, over part of the top. The body inside the coffin was in perfect condition, so well preserved that even a wreath of magnolia blooms and leaves encircling her upper body was still intact.

        The coffin was taken to a Monroe funeral home the day it was unearthed where my parents, along with hundreds of others, went to view it that night.

        The petite young woman was buried in a black silk dress that was clearly visible as was a lace handkerchief and reportedly a diamond ring on one hand. Unfortunately the glass window was cracked when the bricks collapsed and the body began to show signs of decomposition, so it was hastily reburied in a Monroe cemetery the following morning.

        The ornate Fisk coffin still bore traces of orange and black paint. There was a sterling silver nameplate engraved, "St. Clair Wade" that listed the woman’'s age as either 30 or 39 and the date September 7, 1814. The nameplate was also damaged but there was a capital "H" and other small, indistinguishable letters before the St. Clair but no other information.

        A local historian named John Humble said he thought there was a good chance the woman could have been one of Benjamin Tenneile'’s four daughters. The Tenneiles had once lived on the property where the coffin was found.   It was part of the Magenta Plantation, which had been previously owned by Col. Frank P. Stubbs's’ family before the Civil War.

        In searching genealogy websites for information regarding the Tenneile family, it didn’t take long before I found a biography on genealogy.com for Benjamin Tenneile, born around 1750 in Prince William County, Virginia, who died June 30, 1811, in "Bayou de Siard, Monroe, Ouachita Parish, LA."

        Naturally I would find this tiny text around 11 p.m. but there was no mistaking what my tired old eyes were seeing in the last paragraph:

"In 1955, while workers were laying a water line for a home being constructed on Lakeshore Drive in Monroe, a brick tomb was accidently unearthed. On the casket was the name 'St. Clair Wade,' age 30 or 39, and the date September 7, 1814.

"The property had at one time belonged to the McEnery family and was called Magenta Plantation. It was thought at the time that the young woman may have been Mary St. Clair Morrison, wife of Joseph Wade. The connection with the Tenneile or McEnery families is not known."

        There is an early entry in the record books of Ouachita Parish in 1809 that reads, "The first marriage license to be recorded in Ouachita Parish was in 1809 when John Hughes, a farmer of Bayou de Siard, was authorized by law to celebrate the privilege of marriage with Mary St. Clair Tenneile."

        So, with that, I finally felt like I had found closure for the bits and pieces of a strange, mysterious story a 9-year-old child’'s impressionable mind would hold onto indefinitely, but the realization that this was but one such story of men, women and children buried in Fisk cast-iron coffins whose remains were later found to be perfectly preserved has led to a desire to learn more.

        So how did this story lead me to Elodie'’s front door? In researching the partial name "St. Clair Wade", one historian somewhere along the way referred to "St. Clara Wade". Elodie had posted beautiful old pictures of a young woman in Natchez named Clara Wade. Guess what Clara had in her front yard? Two huge magnolia trees. 

Two heads are better than one but that’'s not saying much when two women who have probably watched too much Law & Order try to figure out what "St." could be an abbreviation for or why Clara Wade would have been in Monroe.

        It’s been interesting and fun putting the puzzle pieces together and I am so happy to have gotten to know Elodie.

As I was searching for photos to go with this story, I came across a few stories about similar mysterious cast-iron coffins.  You can read one here.    Also, if anyone has any information on what the "H" or the "St." in St. Clair Wade is, we'd love to hear it.  ~ Elodie

The Night the Music Died

This was originally posted on April 30, 2010.


On this the 70th anniversary of the infamous Rhythm Club Fire, Chicago Public Radio has a story about the tragedy that brings it to life with music from the band that was playing that night and recollections of people who were there. More than 200 people perished in the fire, which changed state and federal laws pertaining to fire codes that are still in force today.

You can listen to it here:

http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=41626

I've also discovered a video on You Tube with a song about the burning by blues artist Gene Gilmore, featuring several photographs of the tragedy.  You can watch it here:

Audubon - The Lost Ballet

John James Audubon

For those of you from Natchez, Mississippi, if you lived here anywhere between 1935 or so through somewhere in the 1980s, you were familiar with the Pilgrimage tableau ballet titled "Audubon."  


Choreographed by longtime ballet instructor Martha Hootsell, it was perhaps the most beautiful and loved tableau of the Confederate Pageant.  The ballet was based on the fact that John James Audubon spent time in Natchez painting wildlife and teaching dance.

As I remember it, the dancers were split up evenly between women in long, romantic tutus and "men" in formal masculine attire that just happened to look perfectly lovely on women.  

There was one lead dancer, who represented Audubon, himself.  Originally there was only one "male" representing Audubon among a confection of lovely lady ballerinas.

The pageant lost the Audubon ballet when the choreography was copyrighted and the owner moved away.  It leaves a large hole in the hearts of Natchezians who grew up with it.  Its loss is as bittersweet as the childhood memories of the smell of our mothers'  lipstick and the sound of violins on warm spring nights when beauty and magic were in the air.

Surrounding Anne Bahin, left to right, starting left front - June Spencer, Mary Ann Brandon, Dot Oriane, Denver Jenkins, ?, Mary Glen (?Smith), ?, Kathleen ?, ?. The two on far left are ?, Carolyn ?. Four on far right, starting in the back are Edith Mae Odom, Bettye McGehee, ?, ?. 

These photographs are sent courtesy of Michelle McMillan Henderson and feature photos of her late mother in-law Mrs. Anne Henderson, née Bahin, dancing the lead in 1941. 


There's also a photo that's guessed to be around 1940 her in the tableau, The Wedding of Jefferson Davis and Varina Howell.

And the last photo is from 1937 showing the ladies of the DAR.


We are trying to identify the women in these photographs, so if any of you can help us out, we'd certainly appreciate it.


To see large versions of the photos, simply click on them.


Many thanks to Michelle for sharing these photos with us.

Unknown man, far left; Mrs. Anne Henderson, née Bahin; unknown child, center; Lawrence Adams and Evelyn Forman, far right

This was some sort of DAR convention and several of the ladies were from out of town. The ones from Natchez are: Front row - Dot Stone, unknown, unknown, Helen Lanneau and Helen Smith Rayne. Back row - Anne Bahin, Judy Benoist, Mary Jane Smith Hornsby, and last three unknown.

Buddy: One of the Shantycats

The Weight of Water

The wind whispers secrets soon to

be revealed.  Pushes him along.

There is no cure.

He shuffles. Small steps. Unsure

for the first time

in forever

whether he can make the hill.

Pail in hand, he bends, turns

the spigot, spends 

precious minutes.

Watches water fall. Rinses

out the larvae and the slime.

Fills the pail and after

a time convinces himself to stand.

Physics is cruel. And a body at

rest remains. He moves forward.

Pours water for the cats,

seed for the birds, feed for the possums

and raccoons. Corn for the deer.

Meat for the dogs.

They need. They all need to live, he says.

Everything is creation or calamity

and he the only thing between the two.

What will they do when he is gone?

It is hunger that drives him

though he does not eat. He is shrinking

and I think he may shrink into the earth

when his credits and balances are due.

He is winded, his time near its end.

He passes me the pail. I bend.

Turn the spigot.     Water falls.

03/09/2012

Editur's Note

A few months ago when we sold Annet's house, I was cleaning out the sideboard in the dining room in preparation to move everything out.  


Lining one of the drawers was a yellowed copy of The Natchez Democrat from 1966.  I'd heard stories about errata in the paper that were so plentiful they'd practically become legend, the most famous being an unfortunately humorous headline in 1949 about five black children from Waterproof, Louisiana, who'd drowned in a local swimming hole:


FIVE WATERPROOF NEGROS DROWN 


I remember hearing a story that the proofreader was so incompetent that one of the reporters on the paper decided to play a practical joke by inserting a crude remark about a local prominent citizen, using a word that rhymes with truck, into the middle of the story.  He missed it.  Needless to say, the proofreader and the reporter were fired.


For years The New Yorker magazine has run errata from newspaper clippings sent in by its readers.  They received so many submissions from Natchez, they finally quit accepting them, deciding we had to be making it up.  Nobody could be this bad!


Don't be so sure.  Looking down onto that old yellowed newspaper from 1966, I scanned the top of the page.  On that day the Natchez Democrat managed to misspell its own name.  At the top of every page of that day's edition was Natchez (Miss.) Democrte.


One of the other stories I'd heard about was a poem that a Natchezian had written, which was a spoof on a story that had appeared in the paper.  It, too, was submitted to The New Yorker, and got published.  I looked high and low for the poem, and not knowing who had written it, had had no luck finding it.


Then this past weekend, it practically fell right into my lap.  I attended the Natchez Literary Festival and went to listen to former Natchezian Mr. Lewis Lord, who gave the keynote address.


Mr. Lord, a journalist and historian, grew up in Natchez, and began his -- pardon the expression -- storied career on the staff of Natchez High School's school newspaper, Echoes.  For years he was a journalist and historian with United Press International as Southern division news manager in Atlanta, Georgia, and later with US News & World Report in Washington, DC, as news executive and writer of cover stories on historical topics.  His articles also appear in Reader's Digest, Portrait of America, and Annual Editions:  American History.


Imagine my surprise when Mr. Lord started telling the story of the famous poem.  I met him after the conference and told him I'd been trying to find it just last week.  He very kindly sent me the portion of his address where he talks about the poem and has given me permission to use it as I like.  So, that being said, I've decided to simply reprint it for my readers.


Many thanks to Mr. Lord for your kind contribution to my blog.  Mr. Lord's address:

One spring day at the end of my junior year – several months after I joined the Echoes – my mother spotted a “Help Wanted” ad in the Natchez Times, the afternoon daily that existed for about a dozen years. The Times itself was seeking help. It wanted a proofreader.

Back then, people would have told you that both Natchez newspapers – the Democrat as well as the Times – needed proofreaders, rather desperately, in fact. Both had enormous problems with their ancient Linotypes, the 19th-Century machines that clanked out the metal type that formed the pages.

Here’s how they were supposed to work: A Linotype operator would hit a letter on the keyboard, and a sliver of metal bearing that letter would fall into place in a tray. A line of letters would become a line of type.

The keyboards were nothing like the keyboards of today. Vertically down the middle were six letters – E T A O I N (That spells Etaion) -- flanked on the right by six more letters – S H R D L U (Shrdlu) – and another six – C M F W Y P (pronounced Cm-fwyp).

Every few minutes a Linotype operator would run his finger down the keyboard to make sure all the letters were falling into place. He would do E T A O I N first, then S H R D L U, and do C M F W Y P two times.

He was supposed to examine the line of type he created -- a line that said “Etaoin Shrdlu Cmfwyp Cmfwyp” -- and then toss it into a bucket to be melted down the next day. But with astonishing frequency the line would somehow show up in print. Indeed no issue of the Natchez Democrat seemed complete without a half-dozen “etaoin shrdlu cm-fwyp cm-fwyps.”

Complaints were common. But my buddy Eddie and I relished the marvelous gibberish. Eddie – he’s now Dr. Edward P. Harris, professor emeritus of German literature at the University of Cincinnati – was the Echoes humor editor. Every week he wrote a column titled “Cmfwyp Cmfwyp by Etaoin Shrdlu.”

Even more wondrous was what happened when certain letters ceased to fall.  For example, here as best I can tell, is what the society editor of the Natchez Democrat intended to say in a story about a fifties era bridal party:

“Mrs. Richard Feltus and Mrs. W.T. Mallory entertained yesterday at a tea shower. They feted Miss Barbara Steitenroth who is engaged to be married. The party took place at the Mallory home on Highway 61 north.

“Arrangements of white Dutch roses were used for decoration. The tea table was covered with a white imported linen cloth and centered with white flowers which were offset with lighted white candles in silver holders.”

Now the next line is missing. My guess is it said “the bride-to-be wore.” And then the story was supposed to say “a white silk frock designed on slim lines and complemented with black patent accessories. The corsage, a gift of the hostesses, was of white bridal blooms.

“Guests included a limited group of close friends.”

That’s how the story should have read. The first paragraph in fact came out okay. But from there on, certain letters as well as an entire line failed to appear. And here’s what greeted the next morning’s readers –

“Mrs. Richard Feltus and Mrs. W.T. Mallory entertained yesterday at a tea shower. They feted Miss Barbara Steitenroth who is engaged to be married. The party took place at the Mallory home on Highway 61 north.”

And now the L’s and R’s and an occasional T disappear, except for two R’s that crop up where there should be a C.

“Aangements of white Dutch es wee used fo decoation. The tea tabe was coveed with a white impoted inen coth and centeed the white fowes whirh wee offset with ighted white randes in sive hodes.

and white sik fock designed on sim ines and compemented with back patent accessoies. he cosage, a gift of the hostesses, was of white bida booms.

Guests incuded a imited goup of cose fiends.”

The New Yorker magazine, in its October 5, 1957, edition, printed that story precisely as it appeared in the Natchez Democrat. Below the story the New Yorker placed a poem penned by a lady in Natchez. Here’s what Jane Stubbs wrote:

        Oh, I woud I wee a cose, cose fiend,

      That these ovey things I might have seen:

      The tea tabe centeed with fowes white

      Offset with ighted white randes bight,

      And coveed with inen coth impoted--

      Suey on these I would have doted!

      The sive hodes and the eses Dutch

      To the decoation added much;

      But the pettiest sight in those chaming ooms

      Was he white sik fock and he bida booms.

So we were saying the Natchez Times wanted a part-time proofreader. My mother saw the want ad, told me to get in the car, and she drove to the Times office in the old building that still stands on the northwest corner of Commerce and State Streets. We walked in, and Mama said, “Lewis can be your proofreader.” And they hired me.

Incidentally, my great, great grandfather Major Thomas Grafton, was editor of  The Natchez Democrat in the 1890s. 


In this photo he is shown with several copies of the newspaper.  He spearheaded several efforts to promote Natchez as a place to visit in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The publications featured photographs of some of Natchez's antebellum homes.  It was his granddaughter -- my great aunt -- Katherine Miller who followed in his footsteps as one of the principal founders of the Natchez Pilgrimage in 1932. 

You can read one of the pieces he wrote about Natchez here.

I got my very first writing job at The Natchez Democrat in the late 1970s under publishers Warren and Martha Koon.  I learned the embarrassment of spelling errors, firsthand, when without any knowledge of Latin, I spelled the abbreviation for "et cetera" thusly:  ect.   Not once, but several times.

My niece, Grafton Pritchartt, also got her first taste of journalism at the Democrat when she interned for them between semesters at Ole Miss a few years ago.

I sincerely hope there are no errors in this blog post, but if there are, they are mine.  And I'm damned proud to be carrying on the torch of errata for our beloved town.

Mississippi Greetings - Sandy Ego

Our friend Keith Benoist -- writer, adventurer, philosopher and photographer extraordinaire -- sent us this photo this morning.  You know deer season's over when the antlers fall.  And how often do you find them in such a picturesque place as this?

One of the most amazing photographs I've ever seen was taken by Keith on Rockefeller Refuge in Louisiana.  It shows an alligator chomping down on a snake as the snake rears up to bite the alligator.


You can view the picture as well as read his excellent article about the refuge at Country Roads Magazine by clicking here. 


Keith was born on Ashiya Air Base, Fukuoka, Japan, ten years to the day after the first nuclear detonation at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. Left handed, right brained, and frequent  wrong turns. Strong proponent of women’s liberation (twice divorced), and ecological stewardship. A photographer since age seven, he’s also a former hunting guide, photo editor, and survivor of several near lightning strikes and a rattlesnake bite which earned for him the cognomen, ‘One Fang.’ Lives in Natchez, Mississippi, for the moment because, “Somebody has to.” 

Prospect Hill Plantation: A crumbling mansion searches for salvation

Story and Photos by Elodie Pritchartt

“My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.” ~ Pat Conroy

Andre de La Barre and I sat in his car at the fork in the road and tried to decide what to do.

“She didn’t say anything about a fork,” said Andre. We looked at each other and laughed.

“Can you call?”

Andre looked at his cell phone. No signal.

“Aw, heck,” I said. “Go right.”

We were in Lorman, Mississippi, thirty miles north of Natchez on a gravel road looking for a house a friend had told us was for sale: 1854 Greek-revival, raised cottage-style mansion on 3.3 acres for around $20,000. Needs a lot of work.

I had posted it on my Facebook page and was surprised at how quickly Andre sent me a message.

“We’ve got to go see this place! Can you go this weekend?”

Then he sent me a link to a book on Amazon called Mississippi in Africa by Mississippi author Alan Huffman. Huffman’s book tells a tale spanning two continents and two centuries, and had all the elements of a Shakespearean tragedy—wealth, greed, war, family, murder, redemption, sorrow and hope—the story of Prospect Hill Plantation.

And what a story it is.

Prospect Hill was built by Isaac Ross, a Revolutionary War veteran who moved to Mississippi in 1808. Extremely wealthy, Ross had over two hundred slaves with whom he operated a successful cotton plantation.  He was known for seeing to the comfort, wellbeing and education of his slaves.

Ross knew slavery wouldn’t last, and had heard about the American Colonization Society, which hoped to repatriate freed slaves to the African country of Liberia. When he died in 1836, his will stipulated that upon the death of his daughter, Margaret Reed, the plantation should be sold and the proceeds used to pay passage for those of his slaves who wanted to go to Liberia.

But Ross’s grandson, Isaac Ross Wade, contested the will and although Margaret Reed would die only two years later, the case was held up in the court system for a decade with suits and countersuits, the slaves’ side being aided by the Colonization Society.

In 1845, a handful of slaves decided they couldn’t wait any longer. The cook drugged the coffee, and after everyone had gone to bed, the house was set afire. Everyone but a six-year-old little girl was rescued. After the uprising a vigilante committee hanged eleven slaves in the big white oak tree behind the ruins of the house.

Even so the will was eventually upheld and the slaves who chose to go to Africa were allowed to do so, establishing a colony called Mississippi in Africa. These educated blacks were prosperous. They operated plantations on which they built large homes reminiscent of the antebellum homes of their former masters, and battled with the native tribes, a cultural conflict that continues even now.  

After learning about the story, I remembered finding an old family tree tucked away in a forgotten drawer at home and discovered that I was, in fact, a descendant of the Wades of Mississippi. I also found an old family album from the 1800s with several pages devoted to Wades. Unfortunately nearly every Wade-identified page had been stripped of its photo, only one intact, and not a direct descendant.

So our journey was a bit more than idle curiosity—I was exploring a heretofore unknown chapter in my family heritage while Andre hoped to find a way to help save the house—built after the fire that destroyed the first one, completed in 1854.

  "The present dwelling at Prospect Hill was built by the current owner, Judge Isaac Ross Wade, who received the plantation as a fee for nine years service as the only qualified executor of the estate of his grandfather, Captain Isaac Ross of the American Revolution.

   The house was started in June 1853. That is, the brick were burned in kilns near the site of the house, in what was part of the orchard for the plantation. The water for mixing the clay for the brick was brought from nearby Turkabee Spring named for an old Choctaw Indian Chief. Two Negro slave boys, Nick and Zack, brought the water in pails carried on their heads. They were sometimes aided by other boys and girls when the plantation work was not pressing.

   The contractor was named Mattingly and the chief mechanic was Ephriam Boyce. The house was a splendid piece of work when it was finished, April 30, 1854. In those eleven months, the beautiful home was finished complete with two fine outbuildings on brick foundations; one had two rooms and a wide front gallery and was used for a kitchen and storeroom. The other had two rooms for yard servants, a wide front gallery, and under the end room, a brick room used for ironing or a laundry room. These in later years were used for a loom or weaving room. There were two fine arched cisterns, one for the house or family use was twenty six feet deep and fourteen feet in diameter. The other, not so large, was used for the kitchen and laundry and servants about the yard. Both were bricked and heavily cemented throughout. Yard and garden fences had been made and painted or white washed, the entire premises were ready to be occupied and the keys handed to Judge Wade.

   The Judge moved his family in on the second day of May, 1854." ~ Jennie Allison Wade Killingsworth, daughter of Isaac Ross Wade. Jennie was born May 2, 1854, the day her family moved into Prospect Hill.

My advice to take the right fork was wrong, but after about twenty minutes and a few missteps, we finally found the entrance, manned by Jessica Crawford, a tiny slip of a girl who had promised to meet us. We followed her SUV as she led us through the backwoods of Lorman, over old logging roads and under modern power lines into an opening in the trees.

Jessica had driven nearly four hours to meet us from her home in Marks, Mississippi, where she serves as southeast regional director at the New Mexico-based Archeological Conservancy. She helps acquire archeological sites for the Conservancy, usually Indian mounds or villages, Civil War sites, some Colonial forts.

“Normally we try to avoid any kind of structures,” she said. “We’re set up to manage what’s under the ground. On top of the ground is what my boss calls ‘the money pit.’”

The Conservancy hopes to stabilize the structure until they can find someone to buy and restore it while retaining an archeological easement so they can continue to study those artifacts still below ground.

The sight of the ancient, crumbling mansion with its bare wooden façade and tall chimneys rising above the tree line was beautiful and sad and amazing.

“Be careful where you step,” cautioned Jessica. “I’ve gotten the yard cleared for the first time in years, but there are stumps, so watch where you walk.”

She’d done much of the work herself, coming frequently and often alone to this remote spot to rescue it from the encroaching jungle. It was clear she loved it and wanted to save it.

An ancient brick staircase covered in lichen, rose gracefully from what had once been the main entrance to the plantation, framed by large cedar trees. Old-growth garden plants punctuated the grounds—camellia, crape myrtle, wisteria, dogwood, all dripping Spanish moss.

The front porch hung at a crazy angle, having lost many of its graceful, fluted columns. The stairway threatened to collapse altogether. An elegant doorway stood trimmed with dentil moulding, jib windows opened onto the porch, the façade still showing traces of the plaster and scoring over wood once used for grander houses.

In the backyard the same white oak that had borne the bodies of eleven slaves had fallen in a storm and taken off the back of the house and part of the second floor. A fireplace hung high over our heads hugging the side of the house. A set of shelves on the remaining back wall still held bottles, all tilting toward oblivion. A peacock sat among the flotsam, quiet and proud.

“That’s Isaac,” said Jessica. “He’s been here seven years. We named him after Isaac Ross.”

“How long since anyone’s lived here?” asked Andre.

“I’ve found mail in there from 2007, but I know the front porch roof had fallen down as early as 2000,” said Jessica.

The previous owner loved the house fiercely, but a string of bad luck and tragedy had forced him to finally move.

We explored the basement rooms crammed halfway to the ceiling with furniture, pianos, farm implements, and the junk of a thousand years: three pianos in the basement, alone, another upstairs, all in ruinous condition and far past help; a kitchen area with sink, refrigerator, stove, etc. Permeating the air was the smell of funk and decay, mildew and something else….possibly the droppings of raccoons and other wild animals that had taken up residence.

Upstairs, we stepped carefully around rotten floorboards and decaying furnishings, books, mattresses and clothes, all left by the previous owner, and saw what a beautiful place it had once been. I was amazed that the mirror in the dining room had not been stolen. A lone bat kept Isaac company inside, hanging from the molding in a back room while Isaac roosted at night on the top of a bedroom door.

We walked to the family cemetery behind the house. Like coming onto a secret garden among the trees, vines and thorns, the cemetery stood anchored by a massive columned monument—its beauty and size difficult to describe. According to Huffman’s book, the monument was commissioned in 1838 by the Mississippi Colonization Society for the astronomical price of $25,000 and bears the following inscription:

“His last will is graced with as magnificent provisions as any over which philanthropy has ever rejoiced and by it will be erected on the shores of Africa a monument more glorious than marble and more enduring than time.”

The remains of a wrought-iron fence enveloped the headstones and crypts, many damaged by a falling tree in another storm. 

Ignoring the real possibility of rattlesnakes, I crawled underneath the house where ancient farm equipment waited as though expecting to be used again. Jessica pointed out a beam overhead with handwriting on it in chalk. I could make out the word “Jefferson” and the date “1872.”

“This is where the workers would come to practice their penmanship,” said Jessica.

On our next visit in November to a fundraiser Jessica had organized to finance stabilization of the roof, I was stunned at how much work had been done. The basement had been cleared, the porch removed and temporary stairs erected to allow visitors ingress. That wasn’t all.

“We have discovered foundations in the back of several buildings,” she said. “…what we think is probably a kitchen, a laundry and a smokehouse and also a brick structure that was possibly for the house slaves. We think we have the cotton gin down the hill by the creek.”

I was excited. Alan Huffman was there, along with descendants of the Rosses, the Wades, and the slaves, some of whom were recent refugees from the conflict in Liberia. They had driven down from Washington, D.C. to attend this gathering. Alan had traveled to Liberia when writing his book, a risk I would have been too cowardly to take. I could only imagine what this meeting meant for him.

We heard stories about the plantation from Jessica, Alan, local historian Ann Brown, and James Belton, a descendant of the slaves from McComb, Mississippi who told us stories that had been passed down to him through the generations. It was an amazing experience.

We shared a meal together—all these many years later—descendants of master and slave. We told stories and asked questions and crossed the barriers of time and place and culture. It was a good day and I trust that good things will come of it, not the least of which are the future prospects of a house with a story in Jefferson County, Mississippi.

The mirror, furnishings and trash have all been cleaned out in order to show the house.  So far, the Conservancy had one individual who is seriously interested in purchasing the property. Those who want more information or wish to help with the stabilization efforts can send contributions to or contact The Archaeological Conservancy’s Southeast Regional Office, P.O. Box 270, Marks, MS 38643, tacsoutheast@cableone.net or visit their website at americanarchaeology.org.

To read more on Prospect Hill, visit Alan Huffman's blog where he has several posts pertaining to the history and the house.

This is not my photograph.  I don't know who took it, but if the photographer should happen upon it and objects to my using it, please let me know and I'll take it down.