Briars
a.k.a. Briers
SW of Natchez, Natchez, MSLocated on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River southwest of Natchez is The Briars, the most fully developed and sophisticated example of the long, low "undercut" architectural form indigenous to the lower Mississippi Valley. This regional idiom is characterized by a range of nearly square rooms placed between broad front and rear verandas which are invariably set into the building's volume. Usually considered vernacular, this form reached its most elegant architectural expression at The Briars. The residence is also significant for being the setting, in 1845, of the marriage of Jefferson Davis and Varina Howell.
On October 30, 1818, John Perkins (1781-1866) gained title to "that tract of land about 1 mile below the old Spanish Fort Panmure in the city of Natchez containing 99 acres" (Deed Book K:232). Shortly thereafter he began construction of a dwelling house (Rainwater, p. 976), where he settled after his marriage that same year to a Mrs. Bynum. A native of Somerset County, Maryland, Perkins had migrated to Natchez ca. 1802, and during the next thirty years he amassed a large fortune from 18,000 acres of cotton-producing land in the Louisiana Delta. About 1816, he was appointed parish judge of Concordia, Louisiana. Upon his wife's death in 1824, Perkins offered his house for sale, describing it as "The New and pleasant Situation called the BRIARS." Confident of its excellent reputation, he continued, "The situation is so well known, that a particular description is deemed unnecessary" (Mississippi Republican, December 1, 1824). The property was not sold, however, until 1833, one year after Perkins had moved to Lowndes County, Mississippi, where he remained for the rest of his life. It was during this latter period that Perkins established three separate endowments for the Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina, thus becoming a noted benefactor of that institution.
From 1828 until 1850, The Briars was rented to William Burr Howell (1795-1863), New Jersey governor Richard Howell's fourth son, who moved to Natchez ca. 1815 and became engaged in merchandising and planting. In 1823, he married Margaret Kempe, and the couple lived with her family at "Kempeton," near Natchez, until the destruction of that residence by fire in 1828 caused Howell to move his young family to The Briars. It was here that Varina Banks Howell (1826-1906) spent her childhood (McIntosh, p. 124), and in the drawing room at The Briars, on February 26, 1845, Varina Howell married Jefferson Davis.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1977.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.