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Builders of antebellum mansions
You will find many of the wealthy men, along with their families, who built the magnificent antebellum mansions buried at the Natchez City Cemetery:
John A. Quitman - lawyer
Thomas Henderson - planter, merchant and cotton broker
The antebellum mansions in Natchez were built by planters, lawyers, doctors, bankers and merchants who made enormous fortunes after the invention of the cotton gin, which brought an unbelievable cotton boom to Natchez.
Attracted by the possibility of getting rich and doing it very quickly, entrepreneurs flooded into Natchez, joining those few families who had settled the area in the eighteenth century. They came from all parts of Europe but most of them were Americans from the Middle Atlantic States and points north. They retained their northern connections and many considered themselves Americans first and Southerners second.
Banking and Education
They banked in New York. They shopped in Philadelphia and New York and only later in New Orleans. They sent their daughters to school in Philadelphia and New York and their sons to college in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts. They owned land across the nation (Frank Surget owned a large part of the land that became Madison, Wisconsin). They summered at all the right places and they traveled all over the world.
The cotton fortunes in the lower Mississippi were so enormous that economic historians tell us that there were more millionaires in Natchez then than in any other American city, excepting New York and possibly Philadelphia, and Boston. However, the population of Natchez in 1860 was only 6,000 while the population of those other cities was much greater.
Architects and Builders
The men who had the antebellum mansions built brought to Natchez leading architects and builders from England or American in background. From Massachusetts in 1809 came Levi Weeks to design and build giant order classical columns in 1812 at Auburn. From Scotland came James Hardie, whose first known work is Choctaw in 1836. From England came Captain Thomas Rose who gained Natchez experience to design and build Stanton Hall in 1857. From Maryland came Jacob Byers, who culminated his Natchez career with the design and construction of Melrose in 1847 and from Philadelphia Samuel Sloan was commissioned to design Longwood in 1860.
Militarily unimportant and with a population bound by family and economic ties to the North, Natchez was spared from devastation during the Civil War. Thus Natchez has the largest group of antebellum homes in the South.
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