Melrose Mansion

The Melrose Plantation House is located in Natchez Mississippi. This is a rather remarkable home and grounds which through a series of good fortunes stayed original and intact to the present time, furnishings and all.

This home was built by a successful plantation owner to showcase his wealth and survived the Civil War. It includes all of the surrounding buildings including the slave quarters. Due to the efforts of successive owners and freed slaves who continued to live on the grounds, the home has become a National Historic Park and is open for tours

This is the entrance to the Historic park which actually leads you to the back side of the house and the quarters for the slaves that ran the household.

This shows the home used by the slaves who maintained the house and did the cooking

This is the backside of the house and service entrances

This is the front side of the home and where visitors would arrive

The marble like finish is all Faux and was painted on a stucco base

Stately trees and formal gardens made this a nice place to explore the grounds

Slave quarters for the field hands and the barn/carriage house were open for tour

The original carriages of the time period were preserved

All of the interior furnishings were original

The device over the table was a "shoofly" and was manned by a slave who gently pulled the rope to move it to create a breeze for the diners

This image shows the original linoleum floor and the matching carpet the park service has created to preserve the original linoleum. This seems to be a source of much consternation as visitors can walk on the carpet, but not the linoleum. However the good quality of the match makes it easy to step "Out of Bounds' which results in an admonishment to not do so.

All in all a nice place to visit to see how wealthy folks lived in the times of the Civil War