Elms Court

Historic house in Mississippi, United States

United States historic place

Elms Court is a historic mansion in Natchez, Mississippi, United States.

Location

It is located at 542 John R. Junkin Drive in Natchez, Mississippi.

History

The mansion was built in 1835–1836.^[2] Galleries of lacy iron work said to have been brought from Belgium.^[3] In 1852, Francis Surget (1784-1856) purchased it for his daughter Jane (Surget) Merrill (1829-1866) and her husband Ayres Phillips Merrill II (1826-1883).^[2][4] Upon Surget's death in 1856, the property (including the house and eight enslaved people) was bequeathed to his daughter Jane.^[4][2]

It has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since December 2, 1977 and may be unique among Natchez plantation houses in being owned by a supporter of the Union cause leading up to and during the Civil War.^[5]

References

1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
2. "SURGET FAMILY PAPERS, Mississippi Department of Archives and History". Mdah.state.ms.us. Archived from the original on April 15, 2014. Retrieved July 6, 2018.
3. "Elmscourt, Natchez, Adams County, Mississippi". Loc.gov. Retrieved July 6, 2018.
4. William Kauffman Scarborough, Masters of the Big House: Elite Slaveholders of the Mid-nineteenth-century South, Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2006, p. 100 [1]
5. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. J.T. White. 1900. p. 528. Retrieved July 6, 2018 – via Internet Archive. Ayres P. Merrill II.