Being English All Over: Natchez and the Rise of the Suburban Estate
Jefferson Mansell, Lead Historian, Natchez National Park, National Park Service
This ADAF Lecture will be broadcast on Zoom, click here to register for the online event.

The drawing room at Melrose, reflecting the height of interior design in the mid-19th century.

Melrose, c. 1848, regarded as one of the great houses of the American South, a National Historic Landmarks today owned by the National Park Service.

By 1820, the suburban landscapes of Natchez were described as being reminiscent of the English countryside. This rare landscape, by John James Audubon, captures the city as it appeared in 1822.

The drawing room at Lansdowne, c. 1856. The parlor suite here, made in New York, illustrates the patronage of Northern furniture makers by Southern planters.

Longwood, the largest octagonal house in the country, designed by Philadelphia architect Samuel Sloan for Haller and Julia Nutt. The Civil War interrupted the construction of the grand mansion, which remains unfinished.
By 1860, Natchez, Mississippi was a major center of economic activity in America. Here, the trade in the country’s three greatest commodities — land, cotton, and enslaved people of African descent — gave rise to great fortunes and to the development of elaborate suburban estates. And while Natchez may have been founded by the French in 1716, by the mid-19th century, it possessed a decidedly British air. Indeed, one writer described the surrounding woods of a property as being reminiscent of his native Sussex, while the architect, T. K Wharton proclaimed one great estate as “being English all over.” This lecture will focus on the development of these grand “English” estates, their gardens, landscapes and collections.
Jefferson Mansell currently serves as the Lead Historian for the Natchez National Historical Park, a unit of the National Park Service in Natchez, Mississippi. A native of Pickens, Mississippi, Mansell returned to his native state after a career working for various non-profit preservation organizations and state historic sites and agencies in Alabama, South Carolina, New York, and Missouri. He holds an undergraduate in communications and history and a graduate degree in education from Mississippi State University and a graduate degree in history and historic preservation from Middle Tennessee State University. Currently, Mansell is researching the various regiments of U. S. Colored Troops that were raised in the Natchez District during the American Civil War. He is also heavily involved in the development of the Forks of the Road, once the second largest slave market in the Deep South, a site of conscience, and a recent acquisition of the National Park Service.