Welcomey’all!

Spring Pilgrimage begins its 90th season with an offering of 21 house tours of private homes and large museum houses to choose from for tours.

Since 1932, private homeowners have opened their doors to the public for tours.

This year, Pilgrimage Garden Club President and Natchez Pilgrimage Tours Director Marsha Colson says homeowners are upholding the tradition by showcasing their houses which appear to be frozen in time, complete with antique, authentic antebellum furnishings.

However, times have changed even with Natchez Pilgrimage.

Many who receive guests have chosen to wear clothes from this century instead of dressing up in period hoopskirts.

A few still are, including Colson who said, “I’ll wear my hoopskirt until I die.”

Natchez Garden Club President Donna Sessions said the club is no longer hosting the Historic Natchez Tableaux, a decades-old tradition where child actors portray scenes throughout the city’s history. Instead, the tours include historically accurate accounts of the people who once lived there, including those who were enslaved.

The Pilgrimage Garden Club will not be naming a new king, queen and royal court this year but will instead be honoring the garden club members’ children who would have reigned in past seasons where they missed serving because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Colson said.

“At the Save the Hall Ball (on April 16) that king and queen will be presented and honored for the Pilgrimage Garden Club,” Colson said. Tickets for the formal event are $100 each and proceeds are used for the preservation of Stanton Hall and Longwood.

Sessions said the NGC will have its annual Magnolia Ball, where the king and queen will be announced for the first time and crowned, and their first-ever Magnolia Festival.

Cheryl Rinehart said this includes a series of many events focusing on the NGC royalty that began with the announcement of the court in December and lasts through Spring Pilgrimage. In addition to the Royal Court, which includes garden club children in elementary school through college, NGC will also be honoring a group of fifth and sixthgrade boys and girls participating in a junior cotillion.

“We will not only be celebrating but teaching them etiquette, dance and dining skills,” she said.

Public events include an Easter Egg Hunt, which begins at 2 p.m. April 9, at Monmouth. Tickets are $10 per child or $25 per family.

The Magnolia Ball begins at 6 p.m. on April 23, at the Natchez City Auditorium. General admission is $50, with a cash bar and options to sponsor the event at various sponsorship levels. Proceeds go towards the restoration project at The House on Ellicott Hill, restoring the upstairs of Magnolia Hall and the use and preservation of other NGC houses.

The Magnolia Festival Tea begins at 2 p.m. on April 30, at Magnolia Hall. Admission is $20 for an elegant afternoon tea to honor NGC royalty.

Three-house tour packages for $60 include tours of Rosalie, Stanton Hall and Longwood; or for $40 patrons can tour two houses, Stanton Hall and Longwood. Individual house tours are between $20 and $25 each.

Colson said this season also includes spe- cial evening entertainment packages.

At The Burn, Colson said visitors can enjoy a glass of wine and appetizers accompanied by a piano performance before venturing out through the partier and terraced gardens.

The gardens were first laid out in the mid19th century for the home’s original owners, John P and Sarah Walworth. It features camellias, azaleas, magnolias as well as rare trees and shrubs, including Asian yews or Cunningham firs commonly known as “monkey puzzle trees.”

At Concord Quarters, “A Very Natchez Revue” allows guests to enjoy a wine and cheese tasting before getting to experience history told through a series of skits, songs and dance.

These tours are $40 each for adults, $30 for children.

Concord, built for Spanish Governor Manuel Gayoso de Lemos in the 1820s, holds the remnants of a two-story brick building that originally served as one of two matching quarters for enslaved people. It was remodeled in the 20th Century to serve as a single-family residence and was badly deteriorated when purchased by Gregory and Deborah Cosey.

“They have restored it beautifully,” Colson said.

To book with Natchez Pilgrimage Tours call 601-653-0919 or visit natchezpilgrimage. com, or to book with Little Easy Tours, call 601-890-2388 or visit littleeasytours.com.

Richmond is one of the most unusual mansions in all of Mississippi because it incorporates three separate and distinct residences of widely different types of architecture, each reflecting an epoch in Southern history.

The most intriguing part of Richmond is the central portion, one of the earliest dwellings in the Mississippi Territory, it is a beautiful specimen of provincial workmanship of Juan St. Germaine, a Native American interpreter, built probably in the 1770s. The front portion of Richmond is Greek Revival, added in 1832, with a classic portico and entrance prevalent in the South at the time. The back portion of Richmond is a plain two-story brick residence, added about 1860.

Although there have been many exchanges of separate portions of this estate, the property belonged to the Marshall family for more than 150 years.

Richmond is known to antedate 1774, when the plantation was granted to John Girault by the Spanish government.

The center section, constructed more than 200 years ago, is still extraordinarily sturdy. It bears evidence of once being an almost perfect type of Spanish architecture, with long galleries on two sides, one of which is reached by a flight of iron steps and enclosed by iron grilles.

After the Girault family, the house passed to the Elijah Smith family and later to the Thomas G. Ellis family.

In 1832, Thomas G. and his wife Mary sold Richmond plantation to Levin R. Marshall.

Levin R. Marshall who was a significant figure in the economic history of Natchez. His vast fortune was made from banking and commerce and from the extensive agricultural investments he made in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. By the start of the Civil

War he had 2,500 acres in Adams County alone, worked by 150 enslaved and another 32 servants at the Richmond mansion.

It was Marshall who added the Greek Revival front portion of Richmond in 1832, complete with classic portico and Doric pilasters. It was also Marshall who added the third portion of austere brick to Richmond in 1860.

This portion made no attempt at beauty except for one compromise, wrought-iron balconies at the first-story windows.

Circular arabesques form ceiling decorations around chandeliers, and ornate gold cornices are over the windows.

The mantels of black Italian marble are exquisite. Here also are huge mirrors in heavy gold frames, original furnishings of rosewood, an etagere holding Bohemian glass, an old bronze candelabrum hung with crystal prisms, a quaint spool-legged table and flowers under glass globes.