Dunleith Built In 1855

Dunleith Built In 1855

Natchez, Mississippi

This plantation home has more beautiful Tuscan columns than the White House in Washington D.C.

Here is the front entrance. Notice the long windows that can be opened and used as doorways to the porches. President Thomas Jefferson invented this concept at his home, Monticello, in Virginia.

There are Tuscan columns on all four sides of this house. Many of these homes do not allow any photos to be taken of the interiors. Last Sunday Dunleith was closed because the docent tour guide was ill but the long windows allowed us to view the rooms on the first level and since I was not inside the house I did not break any rules in taking some photos of the interiors while standing at the windows. Look further below to see what I captured with my camera from outside.

Here's Jack walking along the front porch. I wonder if the Cracker Barrel Restaurant chain started in the south where porch rockers are a traditional porch feature. Notice too the lace like wrought iron porch railings running between the white columns. I think they are so very, very pretty.

This is a view of the double drawing rooms. Notice the beautiful dark wood French rococo style furniture covered in a fine off white damask fabric. This home is rented out for weddings and I could tell that on Saturday there had been an early spring wedding at this home.

I captured two images in this photo: the outside porch reflection in the window glass as well as the fresh white wedding bouquets lying on a sideboard in the center hall.

Here's a view of the walled brick courtyard on one side of the home as seen from the side porch.

The pink azaleas around the foundation of the house stood out against the white walls. See here and below.

I had to take some photos of Jack under this magnificent southern magnolia tree. Look below to see how big it is.

This tree turned 200 years old in 1981!

If only this tree could talk. What stories it could tell.

The pink azaleas were at their peak. But azaleas were not the most commonly planted flower in Natchez antebellum days. That distinction falls to the camellias that bloomed midwinter when the wealthy plantation owners were in residence in these magnificent homes. The blooming of the spring azaleas announced that summer would soon arrive and that the owners would travel to the north to escape the return of yellow fever which was carried by the mosquitoes in the south. But the southern folks didn't know what caused the deadly yellow fever and why some people contracted it and died. One theory at the time was that the disease rose from the clay earth in the spring and that people got it by breathing the air which carried the disease.

We saw lots of snapdragons in bloom on this trip.

This brick building was the outdoor kitchen. Today it is the welcome center and gift shop for the home.

We discovered these antique cars in the parking lot and had to take a couple of photos of them.

The one on the left is a model T Ford car. I don't know what make the car beside it is. I like the running boards on these cars. My father drove a model T Ford when he married my mother in 1926.