Mount Holly (a.k.a. Dudley Plantation) was a historic Southern

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 ...

Foote, Mississippi Foote is an unincorporated community in Washington County, Mississippi, United States. Variant names include Colmere and Dudley. Location Foote is located on the east shore of Lake Washington.Google map On the West side is Yazoo National Wildlif ...

. Built in 1855, it was visited by many prominent guests, including

Confederate Confederacy or confederate may refer to: States or communities * Confederate state or confederation, a union of sovereign groups or communities * Confederate States of America, a confederation of secessionist American states that existed between 1 ...

President

Jefferson Davis Jefferson F. Davis (June 3, 1808December 6, 1889) was an American politician who served as the president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. He represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives as a ...

. It was later acquired by ancestors of famed Civil War novelist

Shelby Foote Shelby Dade Foote Jr. (November 17, 1916 – June 27, 2005) was an American writer, historian and journalist. Although he primarily viewed himself as a novelist, he is now best known for his authorship of '' The Civil War: A Narrative'', a three ...

, who wrote a novel about it. It burned down on June 17, 2015.

Location

It is located in Foote, Washington 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 ...

.Jim Fraiser, ''The Majesty of the Mississippi Delta'', Pelican Publishing, 2002, p. 4

/ref>Woody Woods, ''Delta Plantations - The Beginning'', 2010, pp. 40-41
/ref>City of Greenville: Mount Holly
/ref>
,

Mississippi Heritage Trust The Mississippi Heritage Trust (MHT) was established in 1992 as a non-profit preservation organization in the state of Mississippi. Its mission is to save and renew places meaningful to Mississippians and their history, which is accomplished by ed ...

David Horace Harwell, ''Walker Percy Remembered: A Portrait in the Words of Those who Knew Him'', Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2006, p. 118

/ref> It is situated on the Eastern shore of Lake Washington (Mississippi), Lake Washington.

History

The land was patented by

John C. Miller John C. Miller (born 1978) is an American businessman and attorney serving as the CEO of CaliBurger and its parent company CaliGroup. Early life and education John C. Miller was raised in Los Angeles. Miller has a bachelor's degree in economi ...

in 1831. By 1833, he sold it to Henry Johnson and his wife, Elizabeth Julia Flournoy. In 1854, their widowed daughter, Margaret Johnson Erwin Dudley, acquired 1,699 acres of land known as the Mount Holly Plantation for US$100,000. It came with outbuildings, livestock, and 100 enslaved laborers. A year later, in 1855, she married Dr. Charles Wilkins Dudley, the son of Kentucky surgeon

Benjamin Winslow Dudley Benjamin Winslow Dudley (1785-1870) was an American surgeon and academic in Kentucky, United States. Trained at the University of Pennsylvania, in London, and in Paris, he performed hundreds of lithotomy, trephinations and treated aneurysms. In his ...

. Charles commissioned the construction of the

mansion A mansion is a large dwelling house. The word itself derives through Old French from the Latin word ''mansio'' "dwelling", an abstract noun derived from the verb ''manere'' "to dwell". The English word '' manse'' originally defined a property l ...

as a present for his wife. Made of red bricks and built with the forced labor of

enslaved people Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

, it has two stories and thirty-two rooms. It was designed in the Italianate architectural style, either by architect Samuel Sloan or

Calvert Vaux Calvert Vaux (; December 20, 1824 – November 19, 1895) was an English-American architect and landscape designer, best known as the co-designer, along with his protégé and junior partner Frederick Law Olmsted, of what would become New York Ci ...

, after the Dudleys consulted with both architects. The Dudleys entertained guests such as

President

Albert Sidney Johnston Albert Sidney Johnston (February 2, 1803 – April 6, 1862) served as a general in three different armies: the Texian Army, the United States Army, and the Confederate States Army. He saw extensive combat during his 34-year military career, figh ...

John C. Pemberton John Clifford Pemberton (August 10, 1814 – July 13, 1881) was a career United States Army officer who fought in the Seminole Wars and with distinction during the Mexican–American War. He resigned his commission to serve as a Confederate Stat ...

Ulysses S. Grant Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant ; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Ar ...

, and

William T. Sherman William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

. In the 1880s, it was purchased by

Hezekiah William Foote Hezekiah William Foote (a.k.a. Henry Foote) (1813–1899) was an American Confederate veteran, attorney, planter, slaveholder, and state politician from Mississippi. Early life Hezekiah William Foote was born on December 17, 1813, in Chester ...

, a wealthy planter,

veteran, and member of the

Mississippi House of Representatives The Mississippi House of Representatives is the lower house of the Mississippi Legislature, the lawmaking body of the U.S. state of Mississippi. According to the state constitution of 1890, it is to comprise no more than 122 members elected fo ...

and

Mississippi Senate The Mississippi Senate is the upper house of the Mississippi Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Mississippi. The Senate, along with the lower Mississippi House of Representatives, convenes at the Mississippi State Capitol ...

. It was later inherited by his son,

Huger Lee Foote Huger Lee Foote (1854–1915) was an American planter and politician. He served in the Mississippi Senate. He later sold his plantations to pay for his gambling debts. Early life Huger Lee Foote was born on April 24, 1854, in Macon, Mississippi. ...

, a planter and member of the Mississippi Senate. His grandson was the author

, whose 1949 novel ''Tournament'' is based on his father's loss of the family home.Visit the Delta: Mount Holly
/ref> From 1903 to 1956, the mansion belonged to Mary Griffin Lee. In 1927, it was used as a relief shelter during the

Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States, with inundated in depths of up to over the course of several months in early 1927. The uninflated cost of the damage has been estimat ...

. It was later inherited by Lee's granddaughter. She turned into a bed and breakfast. The plantation mansion burnt down on June 17, 2015.The Associated Press
Fire destroys Mount Holly Plantation near Greenville
''

The Sun Herald The ''Sun Herald'' is a U.S. newspaper based in Biloxi, Mississippi, that serves readers along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The paper's current executive editor and general manager is Blake Kaplan and its headquarters is in the city of Gulfport ...

'', June 17, 2015 The ruins remain privately owned.

Heritage significance

It has been listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

since August 14, 1973. The house contains a historical marker commissioned by the National Society of Colonial Dames on an outside wall which reads: "Mount Holly, Ca. 1856, Excellent example of Italianate style steeped in history of the Mississippi Delta, built for Margaret (Johnson) Erwin Dudley, an early settler's daughter, used as headquarters for relief committees in 1927 flood, marked by Mississippi State Society, National Society of Colonial Dames XVII century, October 10, 1998."Abandoned Mississippi: Mt. Holly, Lake Washington
''Preservation in Mississippi'', February 25, 2010

References

{{National Register of Historic Places Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Mississippi Houses in Washington County, Mississippi Houses completed in 1855 Italianate architecture in Mississippi Plantation houses in Mississippi Burned houses in the United States Demolished buildings and structures in Mississippi National Register of Historic Places in Washington County, Mississippi