Historic House Museums in Mississippi

Beauvoir was the last home of Jefferson Davis and it was the site of his retirement. The house was built by James Brown, a wealthy plantation owner from Madison County, Mississippi. The house was started in late 1848 and was completed in 1852. The house was built as a summer home for his wife and his (eventually 13) children. It was then called Orange Grove, due to the Satsuma Oranges being grown on the property. Mr. Brown died in 1866 and his widow continued to own the property until 1873 when she was forced to sell the property at public auction to pay and satisfy the taxes due on her husband's estate. Frank Johnson, a land speculator purchased the house for taxes and then sold the house and property three months later.

One of the few examples of Gothic-Revival residential architecture in Mississippi, the Manship House was inspired by a design in A.J. Downing's Architecture of Country Houses, a popular nineteenth-century pattern book in which an almost identical house is pictured. Manship adopted the plan to a southern climate by adding floor-to-ceiling windows and a central hall for ventilation.

The Park is made up of three units, Fort Rosalie is the location of an 18th Century fortification built by the French and later occupied by the British, Spanish and Americans. The William Johnson House was a house owned by William Johnson, a free African American businessman, whose diary tells the story of everyday life in antebellum Natchez. Melrose was the estate of John T. McMurran, a northerner who rose from being a middle class lawyer to a position of wealth and power in antebellum Natchez.

Rowan Oak, built by a pioneer settler in the 1840's and situated deep in a grove of oak and cedar trees, was bought by William Faulkner in 1930, and became his refuge from the world until his death in 1962.