ASHLEY FURNITURE WORK FROM HOME

Design and Construction, 1839 - 1842

First occupied in 1842, the Mississippi Governor’s Mansion is the second oldest continuously occupied governor’s residence in the United States. In 1975, it was designated a National Historic Landmark, making it at that time one of only two state gubernatorial residences to receive this honor.

In January 1833, the Mississippi legislature appropriated funds to build a capitol building and "a suitable house for the Governor." Delayed by a serious depression caused by the Panic of 1837, construction of the Governor’s Mansion was not begun until 1839, the same year that the capitol building was completed. In January 1842, Governor Tilghman Tucker and his family moved into the Mansion, which had been constructed for a cost of approximately $50,000.00. Both the capitol building (Old Capitol) and the Governor’s Mansion were designed by architect William Nichols (1780 - 1853), a native of Bath, England. Nichols had served as state architect for North Carolina and Alabama before serving as state architect for Mississippi from 1835 to 1842. Nichols also designed the state penitentiary in Jackson, the Lyceum Building of the University of Mississippi, and a courthouse in Yazoo City. He died in Lexington, Mississippi, in 1853 and is buried there.

William Nichols designed the Mansion in the period’s most popular architectural style – Greek Revival. Architectural historians consider the Mississippi Governor’s Mansion to be one of the finest surviving examples of the Greek Revival style in the United States.

The whereabouts of Nichols’s original drawings and sketches for the Mansion are not known. In a special 1840 report to the legislature, Nichols described his plans for the Mansion:

"The building will be seventy-two by fifty-three feet. The ground or basement story is eight feet high and is divided into servants’ room, store rooms, and cellar. On the principal floor the main entrance is from a portico twenty-eight by twelve feet, into an octagon vestibule, which communicates with a drawing room fifty by twenty-four feet, with a dining room which by means of folding doors may be made of the same size, and with the great staircase leading to the upper floor; … the upper floor will contain four spacious chambers, a wardrobe and a private staircase, communicating with the basement story. The portico on the principal front will be supported by columns of the Corinthian order. In finishing the building, it is intended to avoid a profusion of ornament, and to adhere to a plain simplicity, as best comporting with the dignity of the state."

The 334 B.C. choragic monument to Lysicrates in Athens, Greece, was the basis for Nichols’s design of the Mansion’s front portico. The semi-circular portico is supported by Corinthian columns. These Corinthian columns have a detailed acanthus- leaf carving at the top of the column (the capital). Acanthus is a type of Mediterranean shrub. Corinthian columns also appear in the interior of the Mansion in the octagonal foyer. Nichols employed other Greek Revival-style elements in the Mansion’s interior. Ornately carved architraves with an anthemion or stylized honeysuckle design surround the front door, the small parlor doors from the foyer, and the large sliding doors separating the double Rose Parlors on the west side and the State Dining Room and the Gold Parlor on the east side. The architraves were patterned after designs published in Minard Lafever’s 1839 Beauties of Modern Architecture. Lafever’s publication was also Nichols’s source for the rosette design of the carved wooden mantel in the Green Bedroom. William Nichols used a similar rosette design in the lintel above the door to the Governor’s office in the 1839 capitol building.

Civil War Years

During the Civil War, Jackson was occupied four times by Union troops. Although there is no evidence that either General Ulysses S. Grant or General William T. Sherman ever used the Mansion as headquarters, a July 19, 1863, letter written by General Sherman indicates that Union officers entertained themselves at the Mansion on at least one occasion: "Last night, at the Governor’s Mansion, in Jackson, we had a beautiful supper and union of the generals of the army …." A May 29, 1863, letter from Dr. R.N. Anderson to Governor John J. Pettus documents the fact that wounded soldiers were housed in the Mansion.

During the Civil War, the state capital was relocated from Jackson to Enterprise, Macon, Columbus, and then back to Macon again. Furniture from the Mansion was sent to Macon. After the war was over, in October 1865, Governor Benjamin Humphreys was authorized by the legislature to appoint a person to retrieve the Mansion furniture from Macon. The Mansion furniture, however, had apparently been either stolen or destroyed and could not be located. On July 13, 1868, Governor Benjamin Humphreys and his family were forced to vacate the Mansion and yield it to the provisi

North Carolina cheerleader rootings for the tarheels.