Lost Mansions of Mississippi, Volume II

Prospect Hill

{ 53 } Jefferson County is a remote and hauntingly quiet region of southwest Mississippi, an almost forgotten land tucked between Natchez and Vicksburg. A few large plantation manors can still be found near Church Hill and Fayette, but for the most part there are few traces of the cotton fortunes which were once made here. This county was the site of one of the most mysterious and troubling sagas to emerge from the state’s antebellum past. Facts are hard to come by and legend has outpaced certainty with the passage of time. It is known for certain that Isaac Ross’s Prospect Hill burned on the night of April 15, 1845, and that a six-year-old girl died in the fire. She is buried within sight of the house, which now bears the name Prospect Hill. But the cause of the fire and the consequences of it are shrouded in the vague mists of time, and the whole story will almost certainly never be known. When Isaac Ross sat down to write his final will, he initiated a chain of events that culminated in the fiery destruction of his mansion, legal wrangling that seemed endless, and actions that would have repercussions on two continents . He had fought in the Revolutionary War and then followed his older brother from North Carolina to the Mississippi Territory in 1808. The land Ross chose would eventually encompass a five-thousand-acre plantation in Jefferson County. It was a wild and untamed place when Ross claimed it, but he gradually cleared the forests and woods and built a large house which he called Prospect Hill. Alan Huffman described the mansion, based in part on descendant Thomas Wade’s reminiscences: “Prospect Hill [was] a monument to style and substance, built of poplar milled on the plantation, with wainscoting throughout the downstairs, bookcases that rose to the ceiling of the parlor, and a finely executed stair rail,all crafted of cherry wood.The book cases in the parlor were filled with the best books obtainable at that time and among them was a complete file of the National Intelligencer, a weekly paper, published at Philadelphia.”1 By 1820, Captain Ross and his wife, Jane, had two sons and three daughters,128 slaves,and several plantations. Financial security in those days did not guarantee good health, and Ross lost his wife, a daughter, a son-in-law, and both of his sons within the space of a few years. At some point, traveling to escape the sadness at Prospect Hill, Ross encountered the founders of the American Colonization Society, a group devoted to establishing a “homeland” for freed slaves on the west coast of Africa. He returned to Mississippi inspired by the possibility of ending the curse of slavery in his adopted state and founded the Mississippi Colonization Society with such notable counterparts as Stephen Duncan, John Prospect Hill • • • { 54 } prospect HiLL Ker,Jeremiah Chamberlain,and Edward McGehee . Between them, these men owned thousands of slaves whose labor had allowed them to accumulate unheard-of wealth. They realized that the institution was not sustainable and hoped that the colonization effort would allow it to be brought to a graceful end. Isaac Ross was one of the oldest in the group and the first to take definitive action to insure that his slaves could return to Africa.He rewrote his will to stipulate that following his death and the death of his daughter, Margaret Reed, Prospect Hill Plantation would be sold and the profits used to send any of his slaves who so desired to live in the newly created Liberian colony, “Mississippi in Africa.” Any who chose not to go would be sold as family units and the money donated to a school for freed slaves in Liberia. Ross died on January 19, 1836, and Margaret Reed and Ross’s grandson, Isaac Ross Wade, were named executors of his will. At that point, allhellbrokeloose.Thefamilyquicklydescended into angry factions, and Margaret rewrote her own will to mirror her father’s wishes. Young Isaac Wade, however, had no intention of seeing his inheritance and labor force evaporate in the fulfillmentof hisgrandfather’slastwill.Margaret fought Wade in the courts for two years before her own death. At that point, Wade moved into Prospect Hill and began the long legal battle to retain the 5,000-acre plantation and 225 slaves. He filed suit in probate court, followed up with appeals courts, took on the American Colonization Society, and petitioned the...