MDAH to hold community engagement meeting at Alcorn State University about Windsor Ruins Project

Published 4:18 pm Monday, October 2, 2023

Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) staff will provide an update regarding plans for re-opening the Windsor Ruins site, the historic site of the Daniell Plantation, on Thursday from 5 to 6:30 p.m.

The meeting will be held in the Clinton Bristow Hall at Alcorn State University.

MDAH staff will discuss the status of the column stabilization project that is near completion at Windsor Ruins and engage with meeting attendees to discuss how to enhance interpretation and stories about Windsor Ruins. This valued public input will assist MDAH’s ongoing research and development for new signage at the site, marketing materials and more.

No registration is required to attend the meeting. Port Gibson residents who attended a previous meeting in July helped researchers by asking questions and suggesting angles to explore.

“We invite people in the community to give us input on how MDAH should tell the stories that Windsor evokes the wealth generated through cotton production, enslavement, the Civil War, and Reconstruction,” said Michael Morris, director of the Two Mississippi Museums. “Among the new stories we will share are the results of genealogy research connecting enslaved people with descendants currently living in Claiborne County and across the country.”

Windsor Plantation, one of the largest private residences in the state, was built for Smith Coffee Daniell II in 1861.

It was constructed near the town of Bruinsburg, where Union soldiers crossed the Mississippi River to begin their quest to capture Vicksburg. It was destroyed by fire in 1890.

More than a century of exposure to the elements has caused erosion to the 45-foot-tall masonry columns and fracturing of the cast iron capitals.

In 2016, MDAH commissioned an architectural conservator to study the site.