What a lovely day in Natchez-sunny and 79 degrees!
We began our day at Longwood-the largest and most
captivating octagonal house in America.
Longwood,
also known as Nutt's Folly, is an historic antebellum octagonal mansion located
at 140 Lower Woodville Road in Natchez, Mississippi, USA. The mansion is on the
U.S. National Register of Historic Places, and is a National Historic
Landmark. Longwood is the largest octagonal house in the United States.
Samuel Sloan, a Philadelphia architect, designed the home in
1859 for cotton planter Dr. Haller Nutt.[8] Work was halted in 1861 at the
start of the American Civil War. Dr. Nutt died of pneumonia in 1864, leaving
the work incomplete. Of the thirty-two rooms planned for the house, only nine
rooms on the basement floor were completed.
Haller Nutt's never-finished Natchez home, Longwood, was the
last burst of southern opulence before war brought the cotton barons' dominance
to an end. Longwood survived decades of neglect and near-abandonment to become
one of Natchez' most popular attractions.
In 2010, Longwood was used in the HBO series True Blood for
the external shots of the fictional Jackson, Mississippi mansion of Russell
Edgington, the Vampire King of Mississippi and Louisiana.
Next we visited Hawthorne.
We were greeted by Betty Jenkins- the owner on the porch. Her son Rusty gave us the history their house.
Built in 1814, Hawthorne is a Natchez landmark. Surrounded
by majestic live oaks, this Federal style estate has grounds that are as
beautiful as its interior. The home has
four identical elliptical fanlight doorways and magnificent live oaks and park like
grounds.
And finally Brandon Hall.
Majestic Brandon Hall was formally a large working cotton
plantation located on the scenic Natchez Trace. The land on which Brandon Hall
now stands first passed into private ownership as a royal grant from the
Spanish King Carlos III in 1788. In 1809 the property was sold at public
auction to William Lock Chew for the sum of $7,000. Chew constructed the first
permanent dwelling consisting of a three room brick house about twenty by sixty
feet, built sometime between 1809 and 1820. This structure still exists as the
"basement" of the present house known as Brandon Hall.
In 1833 Chew sold the property to Nathaniel Hoggatt, a
successful planter whose daughter Charlotte inherited the land after his death.
On October 29, 1840, Charlotte Hoggatt married Gerard Brandon III, who was the
son of an early Governor of Mississippi and the grandson of a Revolutionary War
Hero of the same name. They lived in this original dwelling until 1853, when
they began construction of Brandon Hall which was completed in 1856.
In January 1914, the plantation, house, and land was sold to
George Hightower as a result of a default on a promissory note, thus ending an
81 year chain of ownership by the Brandon and Hoggatt families. These 81 years
extended from Mississippi's frontier days during the period of grace and plenty
before the Civil War, and through the South's darkest hours after the war.
From 1914 until the present, Brandon Hall
Plantation has had ten owners. In 1987 the home was completely renovated and
restored, perfectly duplicating the original construction.
Here's the Joyful Noise group in Natchez!
Tune in tomorrow for more historic southern treasures from Natchez...
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