Rosalie

Hi everyone! Here I am at Rosalie, one of the antebellum mansions in town. A few weeks ago when I went to the Natchez antique show, I won a door prize--which included tickets to tour Rosalie. So, since I had the day off today, I thought I'd cash in the tickets. Rosalie is a really cool house--it's right on the bluff overlooking the river and is located on part of the site of Fort Rosalie--the French fort built in 1716. The Park Service owns the other part of the Fort Rosalie site, though no one is really sure exactly where the fort stood. Archaeologists have found parts of the fort, but we think that most of it was eroded away by the Mississippi River over the years. The Park Service is going to make a Fort Rosalie park sometime in the future. Anyway, it's cool to visit the house Rosalie which was built back in 1823 on part of the fort property. This is the house where Ulysses S. Grant stayed when he came through Natchez after the fall of Vicksburg, and the home was converted into Union headquarters when the army occupied Natchez beginning in 1863.

The people on the tour with me were really nice, and whenever anyone hears I'm from Utah, they ask if my family is near the big fires burning there. I tell them that thankfully we're a little north of all that, but unfortunately the air is grody and smoky wherever you go in the state. I'm not sure if I'm going up to Vicksburg tonight or tomorrow, but there will surely be some good shopping times in the future either way.