Rosswood Plantation House, Lorman Mississippi

History of Rosswood Plantation House

Rosswood is an eclectic Greek Revival mansion of handsome proportions. It is the only surviving example of a documented building designed and built by David Shroder, the architect of Windsor Plantation in adjoining Claiborne County. Now probably the most famous ruin in the United States, Windsor's Corinthian colonnade marks the site of Mississippi's most lavish residential essay in the Greek Revival style. Rosswood is signed and dated by the architect on the interior wall above the main entrance, "D. Shroder Builder '57," and its construction wag carefully chronicled in a journal kept by Dr. Walter Wade, for whom the house was built.

Research into the history of Rosswood substantiates the claim made in Goodspeed's Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi, published in 1891, that David Shroeder [sic] was the planner of Windsor. The 1860 census lists David Shroder as a resident of Rodney, Mississippi, and describes his occupation as master mechanic. He was born in Maryland and in 1860 was thirty-eight years old.

David Shroder can be documented as the designer of only Rosswood and Windsor, but he was almost definitely the architect of Highland, or the Hamilton House, which was built in 1856 between Port Gibson and Grand Gulf, Mississippi. Although the house burned in 1929, a former resident of the house has commented on the resemblance to Rosswood, and pictures of the house reveal a striking similarity. Shroder may also have designed the Darden House, which was built c. 1850-55 southwest of Port Gibson. Features common to Rosswood, Highland, and the Darden House are the eclectic blending of Gothic, Greek Revival, and Italianate details and the early use of interior doorway transoms.

Dr. Walter Wade (1810-1862), for whom Rosswood was constructed, was a planter and a physician. He was a grandson of Captain Isaac Ross, who precipitated a great legal controversy in Mississippi when he died in 1836 and stipulated in his will that his slaves were to be offered their freedom in Liberia. After a lengthy court battle, about 250-300 of the Ross slaves were sent to Africa.

Rosswood was built on the 1,285-acre tract referred to as "Rosswood Plantation" in Dr. Wade's 1849 deed of purchase from the estate of his kinsman, John Isaac Wade Ross. Upon the death of Dr. Wade in 1862, the land was divided among his widow and his children. Mrs. Wade received the "mansion house" and approximately one hundred acres, and the property on which the house is located has remained intact since the 1862 division.

In the journal of Dr. Walter Wade, which encompasses the years 1855 to 1862, he recorded in January, 1856, that he met with David Shroder concerning the building of a dwelling house. On May 14^th, 1856, he wrote that he and David Shroder had agreed to a two-story frame house with two cellar rooms, single back gallery, shingle roof, and a two-story brick kitchen. The price of the house was to be $10,000. On July 6^th, 1857, the Wade family spent their first night at Rosswood. Dr. Wade not only provided a description of his house, the story of its construction, and a definitive date for its completion; he also made available valuable information about the building trade in Jefferson County and mid-nineteenth century America.

Tradition has maintained that Rosswoood was constructed for Dr. Wade's second wife, Mabelle (spelled variously Mabello and Mabella) Chamberlain Wade. However, since the house was built in 1857, approximately two and a half years before their marriage in December, 1859, the story has little basis in fact. Dr. Wade's first wife was Martha Taylor Wade, his first cousin, who died in 1848.

In 1898, Rosswood was acquired by Mrs. Mary E. Hamer, a niece of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and was referred to as the Hamer House for many years. Rosswood was sold again during the Depression, and had several owners. Among the latter were Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Mason, who are credited locally with having rescued the house from severe neglect, and Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Black, who were responsible for most of the modernization of Rosswood.

The home is currently listed for sale.

Description of Rosswood Plantation House

Located on Highway 552 between Lorman and Red Lick in Jefferson County on a rural tract of land encompassing almost one hundred acres, Rosswood is a square frame two-story Greek Revival residence. A two-story pedimented portico of the giant Tuscan order occupies the three central bays of the five-bay south facade. The house is set upon a low brick foundation wall with a molded wood cap from which the weatherboarded walls, trimmed with beaded corner boards, rise to a wide entablature with bracketed cornice. The low hipped roof is pierced by four tall brick chimneys, two at each side.

On the facade, the entablature is carried forward to define the pediment, which contains a molded triangular panel; the soffit of the pediment is paneled. The fascia of the upper-porch floor is treated as a secondary entablature with modified triglyphs and guttae placed on the architrave and paired brackets placed on the frieze to support the molded wood cornice. A simple railing with rectangular-section balusters runs between the round stuccoed brick columns on the upper level, but the balusters of the lower level are turned.

Access to the interior from both porches is provided by elaborate doorways flanked by jib windows. The lower frontispiece is composed of a full entablature supported by two attached box columns set between pilastered antae. Between the columns is a single-leaf four-panel door and a rectangular transom, and between the columns and the antae are the side lights set over molded panels. The door, the transom, and the side lights are deeply recessed behind the frontispiece. The upper frontispiece is identical to the lower one, except that the upper entablature is supported by two detached columns set between the antae.

Pediment-shaped window heads trim the windows, which contain six-over-six double-hung sash. Low rectangular openings with plain wood frames and rectangular wood bars are set in the south and east foundation walls to provide ventilation and light to the cellar. The cellar consists of two connected rooms, each with its own exterior entrance to the east. Although both cellar entrances were originally of the bulkhead type, the south entrance has been topped with a small box-like frame structure, the gable roof of which reaches only to the sill of a first-floor window. The cellar rooms contain cooking fireplaces and were probably originally a winter kitchen. (The location of the principal kitchen, a separate brick building sketched and described by the first owner of Rosswood, Dr. Walter Wade, in his diary, is perhaps indicated by what appear to be the remains of an old outbuilding in the yard.)

The original one-story gallery across the back of the house has been fully enclosed and partially extended several times, most recently to provide space for modern family living and conveniences. One original porch column, embedded in the framework of the enclosure, is still visible from the exterior at the east corner.

The double-pile central-hall plan of Rosswood features double parlors on the west side of the hall. The parlors are separated by a large pair of sliding doors set in a frontispiece composed of two fluted Ionic pilasters of wood which support a full entablature of plaster. The plaster cornice of the entablature continues around both parlors. Like the rest of the house, the parlors are trimmed with simple Greek Revival pilastered mantel-pieces of wood, bases with molded crowns, windows set over fixed or movable panels, and four-panel molded doors. Door and window openings are defined by pilasters supporting full entablatures. Those connecting to the hall contain both doors and transoms.

The hall is divided unequally by a low plain semi-elliptical plaster arch supported at each side by a short wood entablature, which itself is supported by a pair of Gothic-paneled box columns, one attached and one freestanding. The ceiling of the smaller entrance hall is elaborated by a molded recess. The larger back hall contains an open stair which begins at the rear with a cluster of delicately turned balusters in place of a newel, makes a quarter turn, and rises along the east wall to the second floor, where room arrangement and trim are similar to those features on the first floor. The stair rail continues unbroken around the stair well to ascend a second flight of stairs to the unfinished attic.

Modern plumbing and closets have been added sympathetically to the house, and the only major alteration occurs in the window openings in the rear wall of the first story.

Photographs of Rosswood Plantation House