Masters Thesis

Monmouth: the survival of a grand mansion estate in Natchez, Mississippi, from the era of slavery to the present

This thesis chronicles the evolution of an antebellum southern villa known as Monmouth, located in Natchez, Mississippi, from its earliest origins as the domicile of a wealthy family of slaveholders to its present status as a small luxury hotel. It examines the material culture of the estate as a mansion villa/garden estate through its decline in the post-Civil-War era to its renaissance as a business enterprise serving tourists and fostering a mythic view of the Old South. This study also looks at the human experience of its residents and retainers, including its white planter elite, entrepreneurial-minded owners in the twentieth century, and enslaved and then free black workers. The story is told in the context of the changing image of the place as it passed from a slavery ensconced residence to a business enterprise that helped perpetuate the so-called ''Lost Cause" ideology of its owners from the 1930s to the last decade of the twentieth century. It looks at the emergence in recent years of a more inclusive, all-racial interpretation of the estate 's heritage, reflecting the efforts of its more socially-aware owners, the influence of the Historic Natchez Foundation, and the CSUN-Natchez Courthouse Records Project. This study illuminates how Monmouth's structural survival depended upon the ideological survival of a white public memory of the Civil War and the Old South. It also helps to explain how Monmouth, as a visual embodiment of this Old South ideology, served as a compelling monument to what generations of white southerners embraced as an essential component of their cultural identity even as its black retainers worked almost invisibly at the mansion estate since its founding nearly two hundred years ago.

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