Natchez, MS is a surpriseOct 26, 2009
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site at Natchez SP was roomy
barges go up the Mississippi
and down the Mississippi at Natchez
I realized I was in the South on the way here after about an hour out of Branson when I started seeing cotton fields ready for picking and then live oak trees with Spanish moss hanging from them.
I chose to camp in Natchez State Park because it is near the beginning of the Natchez Trace Parkway, a road I plan to travel one of these years. I had heard that this was a popular Indian trail that was traveled by hunters and travelers between Nashville, TN and Natchez, MS.
But Natchez (rhymes with matches, not watches!) is much more important to American history than that! This was a city where the affluent cotton plantation owners lived in huge mansions and bought and sold slaves. Outside the town is a triangular intersection called Fork of the Roads where there was a slave trading post, the second biggest one in the south. (I think I saw the biggest one in Charleston, SC last year.) There was so much to read and see and learn in this small city, where antebellum mansions and small buildings stand very near falling down – almost all of both of them being lived in today.
The National Park Service owns two mansions and the former house of a freed black (actually mulatto) man who was a popular barber in the 1800s. I walked by the Rosalie Mansion near the Mississippi River, wandered the grounds of the Melrose estate to see the out buildings and slave quarters of this very rich man, and ended my tour with a visit in the William Johnson house. This presentation was really impressive because William Johnson kept a diary (without expressing his personal feelings of the politics of the day) of his days with townspeople and family. While he made a lot of money as a barber, he was still not allowed many of the privileges of the White citizens of the city and wasn’t allowed to associate with black slaves either. There were a few other families of free Blacks around, so he did have a social life with others, though. He was shot and killed when he was only 42 years old over a land dispute and his killer was acquitted after a trial (he was a white man). Oh, and he had slaves himself! He did what he had to do to fit in with society and maintain his livelihood. This museum explained a lot of things about his life and family and the mood of the day in a small space – very well done. We were allowed to go upstairs where the family lived to see their rooms and furniture. He rented out the first floor – it wasn’t where his barber shop was.
