Elms Court

Elms Court, located off John R. Junkin Drive not far from downtown Natchez, has the appearance of a Mediterranean Villa. The cast iron grill work across the entire front of the house gives it an Italianate look. The house and four nineteenth- century outbuildings are on a 150 acre wooded tract. The driveway winds through woods planted with seasonal flowering bulbs. The approach is reminiscent of landscape parks surrounding European country houses.

In 1837, Katherine and Eliza Evans, daughters of Lewis Evans, a prominent planter, began construction of the central section of the house in the Greek Revival style. Four columns supported a two-story portico over the main entrance. In 1842 George W. Turner purchased the property as a family home and sold it in 1852 to Francis (Frank) Surget Sr., a wealthy planter and businessman.

Surget allowed his daughter Jane and her husband Ayres Merrill to live at Elms Court. In 1856 she inherited the property, including nine enslaved individuals whose names and values appear in the probate records. The Merrills remodeled the house by removing the portico, adding the two wings and the cast iron grillwork

Merrill was a Union sympathizer. Following the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, Merrill requested and received permission from the Union authorities to leave Natchez with his family for the North once his cotton crop had been harvested. In September 1863, the Union Navy provided a gunboat, The Forest Rose, for the Merrills and their