Rosalie House

Rosalie House

Kitchen and slave quarters

Dave & Judy at  Windsor Ruins 

I will continue with our trip.  I need to backtrack as I forgot a couple of things that we saw in Natchez.   We went through Rosalie House which is owned by the DAR and they did the tour in costume of that day.  Beautiful old mansion with huge oak trees out in the yard.  Their was a walkway leading to a brick house that had the kitchen down stairs with the slaves living upstairs above the kitchen.  Each of the rooms in the mansion has a large rope which was pulled when they needed a slave.  Each slave would listen for the tone of their bell.  I cannot imagine my life being totally controlled by a bell.  The thought of it sends shivers down my back and I feel the need to apologize even though I was not involved in the whole torrid affair.  We went to Windsor Ruins which was a mansion built in 1859 and finished in 1861.  It was built by Smith Coffee Daniel for $175,000 which would be 3 million in our day.  The owner died a few weeks after it was built at the age of 34 leaving his wife and three children.  It was four stories with 25 rooms with 25 fireplaces.  It was used as a Union hospital during the Civil War.  It burned down in 1890 due to a cigarette and the 23 columns remain.  This was a few miles off of the parkway but was worth the trip.  We saw many wild turkeys on this drive.  We walked the trace in many different locations in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee.  The trace was sunk 30 feet in some places due to it being on Loess ground.  Animals first made this path from Natchez to Nashville with people following and then it was a post route with Congress voting to clear the route for the postal service.  In some areas you would see up to three trails each higher then the previous one due to rain and thick mud and being impassable.  We went through a cypress swamp which was so quiet and beautiful.  Their was a bridge built  and a trail to walk.  All and all we had a wonderful time driving the 444 miles of the Natchez Trace at 50 MPH which was the speed limit.