Springfield Plantation | |
 Springfield Mansion | |
  | |
| Nearest city | Fayette, Mississippi |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 31°44′46″N91°11′35″W / 31.74611°N 91.19306°W |
| Area | 15 acres (6.1 ha) |
| Built | 1791 |
| NRHP reference No. | 71000454 [1] |
| Added to NRHP | November 23, 1971 |
Springfield Plantation is an antebellum house located near Fayette in Jefferson County, Mississippi. It has been associated with many famous people throughout its history.
One of the oldest mansions in Mississippi, the Springfield Mansion was built between 1786 and 1791. The original plantation had over [2] 3,000 acres (12 km2) and was purchased by Thomas M. Green Jr., a wealthy Virginia planter, in 1784. Green had the house built to show off his wealth. The mansion was one of the first houses in America to have a full colonnade across the entire facade and is the first such mansion to be built in the Mississippi Valley. The whole house was built by his slaves out of clay from the land. The hinges, knobs, and all metal tools were built at the plantation's blacksmith building.
Possibly what makes Springfield Plantation most famous is the claim that a wedding that took place there in 1791. Thomas M. Green Sr., the owner's father, was one of the magistrates of the Mississippi Territory and as such, performed the marriage ceremony of Andrew Jackson and Rachel Donelson at the house in August 1791. However, this date and location is disputed, and there is no documentary evidence that the marriage took place at Springfield or even that it took place at all in Mississippi or elsewhere prior to Rachel's legal divorce from Lewis Robards in 1794. [3] [4]
For two years, Green Jr. had to leave his beloved plantation to go to Washington, D.C. when he became a Congressman from the Mississippi Territory. The plantation survived the Civil War and the Union occupation of Mississippi during the later half of the 1800s.
After numerous owners over the years, the house decayed for decades. Arthur Edward Cavalier de LaSalle, Arthur LaSalle as he liked to be called, was given a lifetime lease of the home by the owners to repair, live in, and give tours of the mansion in the early 1970s. When asked about the mansion when he first arrived, he said, "It was occupied by the rats and pigeons, nothing else." Springfield is still a working plantation. On August 14, 2008, LaSalle died there. The tours have stopped, but the owners say they will be restarted.
It is not known how many people are buried at the Green Family Cemetery at Springfield Plantation. These are the names of those known.
Fayette is a city in Jefferson County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 1,614 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Jefferson County.
The Hermitage is a historical museum located in Davidson County, Tennessee, United States, 10 miles (16 km) east of downtown Nashville. The 1,000-acre (400 ha)+ site was owned by Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, from 1804 until his death at the Hermitage in 1845. It also serves as his final resting place. Jackson lived at the property intermittently until he retired from public life in 1837.
Rachel Jackson was the wife of Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States. She lived with him at their home at the Hermitage, where she died just days after his election and before his inauguration in 1829—therefore she never served as first lady, a role assumed by her niece, Emily Donelson.
Versailles is an unincorporated community in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is located along the East Bank of the Mississippi River, approximately 3.5 miles below the lower limit of New Orleans. The community, for governmental and postal address purposes, is considered part of Chalmette and by some designations, part of neighboring Meraux. As a place designation, the name "Versailles" continues in local use.
Church Hill is a small unincorporated community in Jefferson County, Mississippi, United States. It is located eight miles east of the Mississippi River and approximately 18 miles north of Natchez at the intersection of highway 553 and Church Hill Road. Church Hill was a community of wealthy cotton planters and enslaved people before the American Civil War. Soil erosion, which had been going on since well before the Civil War, caused the area to decline into a poor farming community with none of the land under cultivation by 1999. The area is remarkable because its antebellum buildings are mostly intact with few modern buildings having been built.
The Andrew J. O'Conor III House, also referred to as "Riverbend" and "Buena Vista," is a historic home in the city of Ottawa, Illinois, United States. The structure that exists today was originally constructed in 1848 and underwent major remodeling in 1922. The house was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1993.
Thomas Marston Green Jr. was a Mississippi Territorial politician, planter, and Delegate to the United States House of Representatives during the 7th United States Congress representing the Mississippi Territory.
Thomas Marston Green Sr. was a Colonel in the American Revolutionary War.
Peyton Short was a land speculator and politician in Kentucky. He was a member of the first Kentucky Senate. He was the brother of William Short; he married the daughter of John Cleves Symmes, and was a brother-in-law of future President William Henry Harrison.
Joseph Emory Davis was an American lawyer who became one of the wealthiest planters in Mississippi in the antebellum era; he owned thousands of acres of land and was among the nine men in Mississippi who owned more than 300 slaves. He was the elder brother of Jefferson Davis and acted as his surrogate father for several years. The younger Davis became a politician, U.S. Senator, and later President of the Confederacy.
The Wyolah Plantation is a historic Southern plantation in Church Hill, Jefferson County, Mississippi. It is located off the Mississippi Highway 553.
Richland is a historic building located in Church Hill, Jefferson County, Mississippi.
The Civil War Trust's Civil War Discovery Trail is a heritage tourism program that links more than 600 U.S. Civil War sites in more than 30 states. The program is one of the White House Millennium Council's sixteen flagship National Millennium Trails. Sites on the trail include battlefields, museums, historic sites, forts and cemeteries.
Stephen Duncan was an American planter and banker in Mississippi. He was born and studied medicine in Pennsylvania, but moved to Natchez District, Mississippi Territory in 1808 and became the wealthiest cotton planter and the second-largest slave owner in the United States with over 2,200 slaves. He owned 15 cotton and sugar plantations, served as President of the Bank of Mississippi, and held major investments in railroads and lumber.
Stephen Minor (1760–1815) was an American plantation owner and banker in the antebellum South.
Thomas Mann Randolph Sr. served in the Virginia House of Burgesses, the Revolutionary conventions of 1775 and 1776, and the Virginia state legislature. Married twice, he fathered 15 children. One marriage was to a cousin, Anne Cary, with whom they had 13 children. His second marriage, which resulted in two children, caused a dissention among family members. The youngest son, with the same name as his half-brother, Thomas Mann Randolph, inherited the family plantation, Tuckahoe plantation. Randolph expanded upon the house that began to be built during his parents' short marriage. Orphaned as a young boy, Randolph continued work on Tuckahoe when he came of age. He also purchased Salisbury house, which was used during his lifetime as a hunting lodge.
Old Greenville is a ghost town in Jefferson County, Mississippi, United States. The town was located along the old Natchez Trace and was once the largest town along the Trace. Nothing exists at the site today except the town's cemetery.
Lewis Robards was an American Revolutionary War veteran and Kentucky pioneer who is best remembered as the first husband of Rachel Jackson, who was later married to Andrew Jackson, elected U.S. president in 1828.
The question of whether Andrew Jackson had been a "negro trader" was a campaign issue during the 1828 United States presidential election. Jackson denied the charges, and the issue failed to connect with the electorate. However, Jackson had indeed been a "speculator in slaves," participating in the interstate slave trade between Nashville, Tennessee and the slave markets of the lower Mississippi River valley at Natchez and New Orleans.
The circumstances of the end of Rachel Donelson's relationship with Lewis Robards and transition to Andrew Jackson resurfaced as a campaign issue in the 1828 U.S. presidential election. Historians Robert V. Remini and Ann Toplovich argue effectively that the official Jackson version presented during the election of 1828 is bunk and that the fact trail shows Jackson and Rachel Donelson Robards ran off to Natchez together via the Natchez Trace sometime between December 1789 and July 1790, Robards filed for divorce in December 1790, the divorce was granted on grounds of adultery in September 1793, Robards unofficially remarried Hannah Winn in December 1792 and officially remarried her in November 1793, while Andrew Jackson and Rachel Donelson Robards were legally married in January 1794.
