Beautiful Homes of Natchez: Melrose

The first home we visited was Melrose, which is operated by the National Parks.  This is picture of the back and side of the house.  You can see they are in the process of painting the house, however, the ranger told us when they scraped off the old paint there was water damage and now...

as with many older homes.  A simple paint job has turned into a repair job of the beams that have rotted from the water.

This was the laundry and the dairy.  There were also apartments upstairs for the slaves. Across from the laundry was another structure that is now the Visitor's Center, but used to be the kitchen.  I don't seem to have a picture of it.

We had a wonderful tour guide, the best we had all week in Natchez at Melrose. 

This is the front entrance.

This is in the dining room.  It is called a punka.  It is a fan that a slave would operate by pulling the cord to keep the flies away from the food.  In the south it is known as a 'shoo fly fan."  Bet you can think of a song about this fan.

This home was owned by three different owners, but most of the furnishings are the originals.

This was the girls bedroom.  The boys were on the third floor in the attic.

All the beds were feather beds and were difficult to make each day.

So at the foot of each bed, was a "day bed" for napping.  So the beds would only need to be made once a day.  From that the term day bed.  Did you know that?  I didn't, but we saw it in all the other houses in Natchez.  Good guide.

The grounds were beautiful as we walked down to the slave quarters.

There were two rooms in this house.  A picture of the kitchen is below.