Windsor Ruins

     Spread over 21,000 acres of land in the Delta of Mississippi and Louisiana, Smith Coffee Daniell II enjoyed a great deal of success as a cotton planter in the Antebellum South. His only lasting legacy is the ghostly ruins of Windsor Mansion. One of the most lavish mansions of the 19th century, Daniell's home was built in a basic Greek revival style, with other architectural elements borrowed from the Italianate and Gothic. The 23 room mansion was built over a ground level basement, including two residential floors plus an attic. Extended from the main house was an L-shaped kitchen, pantry and dining room. Storage tanks in the attic supplied the bathrooms with running water. Centered on top of the main house was a cupola where the Daniell family and house guest Mark Twain enjoyed the view and cool breezes from the Mississippi River.
     Completed in 1861, Daniell ironically died just two weeks after the family moved in. A war torn South took its toll on the Daniell family, but managed to survive by selling off their property. Occupied by both Confederate and Union troops, the mansion survived the Civil War period, but was lost in a fire in 1890. All the family's photographs, records and plans were consumed in the blaze. In 1991 historians uncovered a pen and ink of the Windsor Mansion sketched by a Union soldier, giving us the only likeness of the mansion. Descendants of the Daniell family donated the property to the state in 1974, and the site is now administered by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

   Windsor Ruins are located 12 miles
   southwest of Port Gibson on Hwy 552.   Map