Homewood Plantation was a historic

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

with a mansion of the same name located on it in

Natchez Natchez may refer to: Places * Natchez, Alabama, United States * Natchez, Indiana, United States * Natchez, Louisiana, United States * Natchez, Mississippi, a city in southwestern Mississippi, United States * Grand Village of the Natchez, a site o ...

, Adams County,

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

. Built in 1860 as a wedding present for the

Southern belle Southern belle () is a colloquialism for a debutante in the planter class of the Antebellum South. Characteristics The image of a Southern belle is often characterized by fashion elements such as a hoop skirt, a corset, pantalettes, a wi ...

Catherine Hunt, the daughter of millionaire planter David Hunt, the mansion remained unscathed during the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...

of 1861-1865. By the early twentieth century, it was used as a shooting location for 1915 classic film ''

The Birth of a Nation ''The Birth of a Nation'', originally called ''The Clansman'', is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel and play ''The Clan ...

''. The author Stark Young used Homewood as the setting of a wedding in his 1934 novel (pages 414 and 415). The mansion burnt down in 1940.

Location

Homewood was located north of the Natchez, Mississippi city limits on Pine Ridge Road.

History

Homewood was the antebellum plantation home of William S. Balfour and his wife, Catherine Hunt. It adjoined Catherine's sister Charlotte's

Lansdowne Lansdowne or Lansdown may refer to: People * Lansdown Guilding (1797–1831), Saint Vincent and the Grenadines naturalist and engraver *Fenwick Lansdowne (1937–2008), Canadian wildlife artist * George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne (1666–1735) ...

Plantation. The 600 acre Homewood Plantation was a wedding gift to William and Catherine from Catherine's millionaire, planter father David Hunt. William S. Balfour's father, William L. Balfour of Madison County, Mississippi, was one of the richest Mississippi antebellum planters. He was a founder of the

Mississippi College Mississippi College (MC) is a private Baptist university in Clinton, Mississippi. Founded in 1826, MC is the second-oldest Baptist-affiliated college or university in the United States and the oldest college or university in Mississippi. Histor ...

at Clinton. James Buchanan had picked him to run as his vice-president in the 1857 presidential election; however, he died before the election. William and Catherine's mansion on Homewood Plantation was the suburban Natchez equal of nearby

Stanton Hall Stanton Hall, also known as Belfast, is an Antebellum Classical Revival mansion at 401 High Street in Natchez, Mississippi. Built in the 1850s, it is one of the most opulent antebellum mansions to survive in the southeastern United States. It i ...

, which was in the town of Natchez. The mansion, designed by Scottish architect James Hardie, took the five years from 1855 to 1860 to build. While it was being built, William and Catherine lived on his

Issaquena County, Mississippi Issaquena County is a county located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 1,406, making it the least populous county in the United States east of the Mississippi River. Its county seat is Mayersville. Wi ...

Plantation. This 1,400 acre plantation was known as Fairland and was near the Hunt family's Issaquena County plantations. William had 177 slaves in Issaquena County in 1860. The Balfours moved to Homewood in 1860 with their six children. During the

of 1861-1865, William served in the

Confederate States Army The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting ...

as a Major, and Catherine left by carriage with her children for about one year, moving from place to place. The family returned after the war to find that Homewood was intact. Without the slave labor from before the war, the Balfour's wealth began to decline. Generally, Catherine and her siblings used

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

real estate, inherited from her father David, mortgages on their plantations, and whatever else they had to support themselves after the war. The Balfours sold Homewood to Mr. and Mrs. William J. Kaiser of Natchez in 1907. The Kaisers ran a dairy farm on the plantation. Some scenes from the 1915 film

were made on the grounds and porches of Homewood. Beginning in 1932 Homewood became well known, because it was on the annual Natchez Pilgrimage houses tour. When their children were grown, the Kaisers sold the mansion and 73 acres in 1937 to Mr. and Mrs. Swan of New York, who had visited Homewood on a Pilgrimage tour, for $35,000. Mrs. Swan caused a lot of talk in Natchez. She and her husband, who was much younger, spent huge sums modernizing the mansion and expanding the gardens during the last years of the Great Depression. Their dogs slept on Beautyrest mattresses. The mansion caught fire in 1940. As it was burning to the ground, Mrs. Swan, with a bottle of whiskey in her hand, slowed the firemen's efforts by ordering them off the property. People speculated that the Swan's intentionally burned the mansion. The Swan's, however, collected $43,000 in damages from five insurance companies as a result of the fire and returned to live in New York. The old antebellum kitchen dependency building, which survived the fire, has been remodeled for use as a residence. The plantation was later sold to William D. Meriwether, Sarah J. Meriwether, and their children. The old carriage house, which also survived the fire, has been a residence and a clubhouse for the Natchez Country Club.

Architecture

The Homewood mansion was about 72 by 96 feet. It had five floors. The basement had several rooms with fireplaces. The first floor had six rooms. The first floor rooms were divided by a center hall and a cross hall that ran just behind the two front rooms. The library, front portion of the center hall, and the

parlor A parlour (or parlor) is a reception room or public space. In medieval Christian Europe, the "outer parlour" was the room where the monks or nuns conducted business with those outside the monastery and the "inner parlour" was used for necess ...

could be combined into a 72 foot long ballroom, when the large solid mahogany pocket doors connecting them were opened, that stretched across the front of the house. The second floor had a similar floor plan to the first floor. The attic floor had a large center room surrounded by eight small storage rooms. From the

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, fro ...

and the adjoining

widow's walk A widow's walk, also known as a widow's watch or roofwalk, is a railed rooftop platform often having an inner cupola/turret frequently found on 19th-century North American coastal houses. The name is said to come from the wives of mariners, who ...

on top of the mansion, the town of Natchez could be seen in the distance. The mansion had two and one-half foot thick brick walls and thirty-five foot high, metal front porch columns with Ionic capitals. The

sidelight A sidelight or sidelite in a building is a window, usually with a vertical emphasis, that flanks a door or a larger window. Sidelights are narrow, usually stationary and found immediately adjacent doorways.Barr, Peter.Illustrated Glossary, 19th ...

windows beside the front door had imported pink glass from Belgium. Both sides of the mansion had two-story porches with metal lace-work railings. The imported Cordovan

marble Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite. Marble is typically not foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the term ''marble'' refers to metamorphose ...

fireplace mantles varied in color. The library mantle was pink and grey. The

drawing room A drawing room is a room in a house where visitors may be entertained, and an alternative name for a living room. The name is derived from the 16th-century terms withdrawing room and withdrawing chamber, which remained in use through the 17th cent ...

mantle was white. The dining room mantle was pink with oxblood. Each of the eight bedrooms had different shadings. The interior doors were made of three inch thick mahogany. A curved stairway with fan shaped steps and a black walnut railing was in the rear of the central hall and connected the first, second and attic floors. A

spiral staircase Stairs are a structure designed to bridge a large vertical distance between lower and higher levels by dividing it into smaller vertical distances. This is achieved as a diagonal series of horizontal platforms called steps which enable passage ...

rose from the large center room of the attic to the cupola on top. A two-story kitchen flanked a rear corner of the mansion. The grounds also contained a two-story carriage house made of brick. File:Homewood Plantation 6.jpg, First Floor Center Hall of Homewood Mansion (1936) File:Homewood Plantation 3.jpg, Rooms Across the Front of Homewood Mansion on the First Floor (1936) File:Homewood Plantation 2.jpg, Spiral Stairway (attic to cupola) in Homewood Mansion (1936) File:Homewood Plantation 7.jpg, Rear of Homewood Mansion (1936)

References

External links

/ You Tube video with photos of Homewood

Map of Natchez at Mississippi Department of Archives and History website shows Homewood Plantation at the top

American Memory from the Library of Congress website in the Architecture topic has 18 images of Homewood mansion - some of which are floor plans

Map showing the Balfour family's Issaquena County, Mississippi Plantation in the approximate center
{{coord, 31.576563, -91.370270, display=title Houses in Natchez, Mississippi Plantation houses in Mississippi Plantations in Mississippi Antebellum architecture Houses completed in 1860 Burned houses in the United States Historic American Buildings Survey in Mississippi