Holly Grove Plantation, Centreville Mississippi

Date added: August 30, 2023

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Adams, Jefferson, and Wilkinson are the only Mississippi counties with significant collections of Federal style architecture, and the most sophisticated examples are the townhouses and suburban estates of Natchez like the Mercer House, The Briars, and Arlington. Holly Grove is one of only a small number of Federal style plantation houses that are grand in proportion and finely trimmed. The integrity of the house is outstanding, despite the loss of a rear two-story porch with end "cabinet" rooms which deteriorated to the point of needing reconstruction rather than restoration. Holly Grove has retained its Federal character throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and was spared the Greek Revival remodeling so characteristic of most Federal style residences in the state. The quality of the ornamental plaster and millwork in the first and second-story front rooms and front hallways is exceptional.

Holly Grove Plantation was probably established in 1812, when Duncan Stewart obtained a patent to the land. According to Goodspeed's BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS OF MISSISSIPPI, Duncan Stewart migrated from North Carolina to Tennessee and finally settled in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, about 1808 or 1809. He had been a member of the Tennessee legislature and served as Mississippi's lieutenant governor. Stewart's will was probated in 1821, and an inventory of his household possessions at Holly Grove is filed in the Wilkinson County courthouse.

The earliest part of the Holly Grove house was probably built during the territorial period, shortly after Stewart acquired the property in 1812. The house was originally a two-story three-bay house with one room on each floor. The southern three bays of the house constitute the original portion, whose framing and millwork pre-date the other rooms of the house. The expansion of the house to its present size occurred not long after the original portion was built, probably before the ca. 1820 death of Duncan Stewart judging by the quantity of furnishings documented in his inventory. However, the fanlighted doorways and elaborate mantel pieces of the front two rooms stylistically date to the end of the Federal period which, in Mississippi, lasted well into the 1830s. Holly Grove remained the property of the Stewart family throughout the antebellum period.

Building Description

Holly Grove Plantation is located on the west side of Mississippi State Highway 33 about two miles north of the Louisiana state line. The plantation residence is a two-story, frame, Federal-style building that is supported by brick piers and is sheltered by a gabled roof flanked by two inside-end chimneys on the southern elevation and two outside-end chimneys on the northern elevation. The easterly facade is fronted by a double-tiered: gallery with giant order, stuccoed-brick Tuscan columns supporting a full entablature. The columns are linked on the second story level by a railing with a round handrail and rectangular-sectioned balusters. The symmetry of the gallery columns masks the asymmetrical facade of the house, which was originally only a two-story, three-bay house before a later substantial enlargement and remodeling. The southern three bays represent the original portion of the house, which was apparently similar in form to the ca. 1828 President's House at Jefferson College in Adams County.

The first story of the enlarged house is a six-bay composition of window-door-window-large entry-window-window (from south to north); the second-story facade has seven bays composed of window-door-window-door-window-door-window (from south to north). Both the upper and lower facades are finished in horizontal matched boards with a beaded base. All window surrounds are molded and are filled with nine-over-six, double-hung sash. Except for the fanlighted main entry, all other entry doorways feature molded surrounds and single-leaf, six-panel doors set beneath rectangular transoms. The focal point of the facade is the principal entry which has an elliptical fanlight with tracery atop. double-leaf doors with four-molded and fielded panels flanked by sidelights over-molded panels. The doorway and sidelights are flanked and separated by unusually shaped and detailed, engaged, vernacular columns that are similar to the columns on an interior mantelpiece. Hollow-sided diamonds, unusual in their flattened profile, are applied to the sidelights of the principal entry and to the transom of the other first-story doorway.

The fan-lighted entry doorway is repeated on the interior of the house in the doorway separating the front entry hall from a widened rear stair hall. The repetition of an exterior fan-lighted doorway on an interior doorway is found in neighboring Adams County at Hawthorne, Fair Oaks, and the Mercer House. The enlargement of Holly Grove expanded the house from what was essentially a two-story house with one large room on each floor, to a house with a double-pile plan with a central hallway that widened in the second range of rooms to accommodate an interior staircase. A two-story rear porch with end "cabinet" rooms was also added during remodeling, but years of neglect resulted in the loss of this feature due to extensive water damage. The present owners were forced to remove the badly deteriorated rear porch and "cabinet" rooms and have not yet decided whether or not to reconstruct this portion of the house.

The interior of Holly Grove is elaborated with some of the finest Federal-style millwork and plaster ornament in Mississippi. The original two rooms of the house at the southern end are identically trimmed with symmetrically molded window and door surrounds with corner blocks, molded chair rail, molded baseboards, and plaster cornice. The window surrounds extend to the baseboard to form molded plaster panels beneath the windows, an architectural curiosity expressed in the Greek Revival style in neighboring Amite County at the Talbert-Cassels House. Interestingly, only the quality of the plaster cornices distinguishes the first story from the upper story. The protrusion of the interior chimneys into the southern rooms is treated in an unusual manner on the first story where cabinets with molded doors are located beneath the flanking windows, which appear to be deeply recessed in the end wall. Windows storage units dating to the mid-twentieth century replaced the window cabinets on the upper level.

The mantel pieces in the southern and northern first-story rooms are contemporary with one another. The southern mantelpiece has a shaped shelf, supported by bed moldings, and chimney breast returns more common to Louisiana than Mississippi. The mantel frieze, which is bordered by gouged-carved bands, has a central tablet with sunburst and end blocks with oval patterae. The end blocks are supported by paired colonnettes similar in design to the columns of the fanlighted doorways. The mantelpiece in the northern front room is similar, but the central tablet contains an oval patterae and oval patterae adorn unusual, paired, end blocks supported by paired, fluted colonnettes.

The northern first-story room is the most beautifully ornamented in the house with symmetrically molded door and window surrounds with corner blocks, a molded-panel wainscoting, and elaborate plaster cornices and ceiling ornament with a motif of holly leaves and berries portraying in plaster the name of the plantation.

The stairway to the second story is located in the widened rear hallway of the house. The existing staircase is a reflection of a mid-twentieth-century renovation, but it occupies the same location as the original, which was probably steeper than the existing. The stair runs along the northern wall of the widened rear hallway in an easterly direction, and the rectangular-sectioned balusters and newels railing the stairwell on the second-story level appear to be original.

The rear rooms of the house, though not so finely trimmed as the more public rooms, are adorned with molded window and doorway surrounds and plainer Federal-style mantel pieces. All interior doors of the house have six molded and fielded panels. The first and second-story central doorways that opened onto the rotted and missing rear porch are matching compositions of double-leaf doors framed by sidelights over molded panels and a rectangular transom. The missing rear porch featured square posts that may or may not have been original.

No historic outbuildings at Holly Grove have survived, but the plantation cemetery with decorative iron fencing is visible from the house and is located on the north side of the plantation drive between the house and State Highway 33.