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Pilgrimage Guide
weed-choked lot in an out-of-the-way town or a mysterious row of stately oaks leading nowhere in the middle of a soybean field. Mal-maison and Eagles’ Nest, Annan-dale and Ingleside, LaGrange and Windy Hill Manor: Mississippi’s history was written in these lost houses and many others scattered about the state.
Malmaison, built for Choctaw Chief Greenwood Leflore in 1854, dominated a wooded hillside in Carroll County for nearly a century. Designed by young architect James Clark Harris in a Greek Revival/I talianate combination, its columned porticoes rose to a cupola where the old chief could survey the fifteen thousand
acres of his Teoc Plantation, "the land of tall pines." Summer breezes flowed through the intersecting hallways and along the 60-foot-long dining hall. Proud of his French heritage, Leflore imported the elaborate furnishings and Aubus-son carpets from Europe; visitors to his parlor marveled at the hand-painted silk curtains depicting Versailles and Fountainbleu. Portraits of Leflore and Pushmataha hung over the black marble mantels along with a ceremonial sword presented to Leflore by President Andrew Jackson.
A staunch Union supporter, Greenwood Leflore stubbornly flew the American flag over Malmaison throughout the Civil War. Enraged vandals set fire to the house more
than once, but their efforts were quickly snuffed out. The home passed through several generations of Leflore’s descendants until 1942, when a latenight blaze brought its cypress beams and delicate balconies crashing down forever. Abandoned to the elements, the numerous elegant outbuildings crumbled, and only a desolate foundation remains to mark the remote spot w’here Malmaison stood.
While Leflore was carving his empire out of the Mississippi Delta swamps, another Southern pioneer began the task of remodeling his family home near Woodville. James A. Ventress, the guiding force behind the establishment of the University of Mississippi, had watched with admiration as Philadelphia ar-
Windsor Unveiled
A drawing in an obscure Yankee soldier’s diary finally gives us a glimpse of what our most famous ruin once looked like.
By M.C. Miller
For more than a century, Windsor’s 22 towering columns have stood in a remote corner of Claiborne County, t heir stark eloquence a symbol of Mississippi’s architectural legacy. The actual home existed for a mere 30 years before fire destroyed it, but during that brief period it must have inspired more than one photographer to set up his tripod and capture it on film.
Diligent searches by historians and archivists, however, have failed to turn up so much as a dusty tintype. Conjectural drawings based on family members’ memories left a vague feeling of incompleteness. Only an amazing quirk of fate recently brought an eyewitness rendering of Windsor back to Mississippi.
May 1863 found waves of Union troops debarking at the tiny river town of Bruinsburg. As a company of Ohio soldiers headed for Vicksburg, they undoubtedly paused to marvel at the majesty of a practically new Windsor. One young lieutenant, Henry Otis Dwight, stopped long enough to sketch the house, adding the drawing to his growing collec-
tion of battle scenes and camplife depictions. The finely detailed sketch remained in his diary, forgotten in the Ohio Archives Collection, for one hundred and thirty years. Researcher Jerry Frey, compiling a history of the 20th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, stumbled across it and sent it along to his friend Terry Winschel, Historian of the Vicksburg National Military Park. The description scribbled beneath by Lieutenant Otis, "Residence near Bruinsburg, Mississippi," left no doubt as to the identity of the structure. What the soldier has given us is the only extant picture of fabled Windsor.	■
MISSISSIPPI 17A