Natchez

House on Ellicott's Hill, also known as Connelly's Tavern, James Moore House, or Gilreath's Hill, is a historic house in Natchez, Mississippi. It was... declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974 and a Mississippi Landmark in 2001. James Moore, a merchant from Natchez, built the house in 1798. It was one of the first built when Spanish settlers laid out the city of Natchez, and it is believed to have influenced architecture in a wide region. At the time of the building's construction, only people of importance such as doctors and wealthy merchants could purchase lots on Canal Street. Moore's House is the last of the merchants' houses remaining from this time period. One side of the house overlooks the Mississippi River from atop a bluff and contains a two-story gallery, while the other side's upper story is at ground level, where it is reached by bridges across a dry moat. In 1797, before the house was built, Andrew Ellicott was sent by George Washington to mark the boundary between the United States and Spanish Louisiana, which had been set at the 31st parallel by the Treaty of San Lorenzo de Real.
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Stanton Hall, also known as Belfast, is an Antebellum Classical Revival mansion in Natchez, Mississippi built during 1851-1857 for Frederick Stanton,... a cotton broker. It occupies a full block on High Street between Pearl and Commerce Streets in Natchez and is operated as a historic house museum by the Pilgrimage Garden Club. Reportedly, a chartered ship was used to transport the moldings, marble fireplace mantles, wrought ironwork, and other building materials and furnishings to the site from Europe. The house was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974 and a Mississippi Landmark in 1995. The mansion is also available for rental for weddings and other special events. The mansion serves as a design for Disneyland's Haunted Mansion.
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Arlington is a historic Federal style house and outbuildings in Natchez, Mississippi. The 55-acre property, which includes three contributing... buildings, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. It was further declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974. Following a fire that destroyed much of the main house, it was placed on Mississippi's 10 most endangered historic places for 2009 by the Mississippi Heritage Trust. Tradition maintains that Arlington was built by John Hampton White, a native of Elizabethtown, New Jersey, and his wife, Jane Surget White. The date that construction of the house began is murky. It is thought by scholars to have been built about 1819–20. The architect of Arlington is unknown. Its design has historically been attributed to John Hampton White, but no documentation exists to validate the claim. What is documented is that Lewis Evans, a wealthy Natchez planter, purchased the land on which Arlington stands in 1806. Here he established a plantation and built a house. In 1814 he sold a portion of the plantation containing his house to Jonathan Thompson, a land speculator.
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Auburn is an Antebellum Greek Revival mansion in Duncan Park in Natchez, Mississippi. It was designed and constructed by Levi Weeks in 1812, the... first planned building in the town. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974 and a Mississippi Landmark in 1984. In 1811, Lyman Harding, the first Attorney General of Mississippi, hired Levi Weeks, a young self-proclaimed architect, to design and build the mansion. The original building was 60 feet by 45 feet with a two story portico supported by four columns and includes an unusual floating spiral staircase between the first and second floors. Levi Weeks designed the house to be, in his words, the "most magnificent building in the state." After Harding died in 1820, the building was bought by Dr. Stephen Duncan, who expanded the house to include two symmetrical wings, greatly expanding interior space. Duncan later abandoned the building amidst growing secession tensions just before the American Civil War, and the house was placed in the care of his descendants. The building and 222 acres was sold by the family to the city of Natchez in 1911 and is now a historic house museum in a public park.
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Glen Ballard is an American songwriter and record producer, best known for co-writing and producing Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill , which... won Grammy Award for "Best Rock Album", and "Album of the Year" amongst others, and is ranked by the Rolling Stone amongst The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. He was involved in the recording and writing of Michael Jackson's Thriller and Bad. As a writer he co-wrote songs like "Man in the Mirror" and "Hand in My Pocket" . He is the founder of Java Records. He won the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture for the song "Believe" . He has performed on, or produced, the following: Ballard wrote the screenplay for Clubland, an ill-received music-driven film about an aspiring musician in Los Angeles. He has written songs in half-a-dozen films including The Slugger’s Wife, Navy Seals, and Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. Ballard co-wrote the music and lyrics for Ghost The Musical with David A. Stewart and Bruce Joel Rubin, which opened in London's West End on 19 July 2011 and will open on Broadway in the spring of 2012.
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Mickey Leroy Gilley is an American country music singer and musician. Although he started out singing straight-up country and western material in... the 1970s, he moved towards a more pop-friendly sound in the 1980s, bringing him further success on not just the country charts, but the pop charts as well. Among his biggest hits are "Room Full of Roses," "Don't the Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time," and the remake of the Soul hit "Stand by Me". He is also the cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl McVoy, Jim Gilley and Jimmy Swaggart. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, Gilley is a licensed pilot, who holds an instrument rating with commercial pilot privileges for multi-engine airplanes, as well as private pilot privileges for single engine aircraft. He was born to Arthur Fillmore Gilley and Irene Gilley in Natchez, the seat of Adams County in western Mississippi. For many years, Gilley lived in the shadow of his cousin, Jerry Lee Lewis, the rock and roll singer and musician in the 1950s. The two as children grew up close by each other; Gilley lived just across the Mississippi River from Louisiana where Lewis grew up.
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Charles Henry Smith is a former American football running back. He played two seasons for the American Football League's Oakland Raiders , and 5 for... the National Football League's Raiders . He also played for the NFL's San Diego Chargers in 1975. He attended the University of Utah. Smith scored the go-ahead touchdown in the famous 1968 Heidi Game between the Raiders and New York Jets. Most of the country didn't see the touchdown because NBC had cut away from the game at 7PM right to the movie Heidi.
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Olu Dara Jones is an American cornetist, guitarist and singer. Olu Dara first became known as a jazz musician, playing alongside avant-garde... musicians such as David Murray, Henry Threadgill, Charles Brackeen, and Art Blakey. His first album under his own name, 1998's In the World: From Natchez to New York, revealed another aspect of his musical personality: the leader and singer of a band immersed in African-American tradition, playing an eclectic mix of blues, jazz, and storytelling, with tinges of funk, African popular music and reggae. His second album Neighborhoods, with guest appearances by Dr John and Cassandra Wilson, followed in a similar vein. Rapper Nas is Dara's son. He encouraged his father to record the music he was playing with his band, and guested on "Jungle Jay" from In the World. Dara played the cornet on the track "Life's A Bitch" from Nas's debut album Illmatic in 1994 and on the song "Dance" from God's Son, a posthumous tribute to Anne Jones his former wife and Nas's mother .
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Mickey Leroy Gilley is an American country music singer and musician. Although he started out singing straight-up country and western material in... the 1970s, he moved towards a more pop-friendly sound in the 1980s, bringing him further success on not just the country charts, but the pop charts as well. Among his biggest hits are "Room Full of Roses," "Don't the Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time," and the remake of the Soul hit "Stand by Me". He is also the cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl McVoy, Jim Gilley and Jimmy Swaggart. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, Gilley is a licensed pilot, who holds an instrument rating with commercial pilot privileges for multi-engine airplanes, as well as private pilot privileges for single engine aircraft. He was born to Arthur Fillmore Gilley and Irene Gilley in Natchez, the seat of Adams County in western Mississippi. For many years, Gilley lived in the shadow of his cousin, Jerry Lee Lewis, the rock and roll singer and musician in the 1950s. The two as children grew up close by each other; Gilley lived just across the Mississippi River from Louisiana where Lewis grew up.
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Martha Mattox was an American silent film actor most notable for her role of Mammy Pleasant in the 1927 film The Cat and the Canary. She also played... a role in Torrent . She died from a heart ailment at age 53.
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Charles Henry Smith is a former American football running back. He played two seasons for the American Football League's Oakland Raiders , and 5 for... the National Football League's Raiders . He also played for the NFL's San Diego Chargers in 1975. He attended the University of Utah. Smith scored the go-ahead touchdown in the famous 1968 Heidi Game between the Raiders and New York Jets. Most of the country didn't see the touchdown because NBC had cut away from the game at 7PM right to the movie Heidi.
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Gina St. John is an American actress and television presenter. She has hosted shows including CNET Central and E! News Daily, and has had roles in... television dramas such as Crossing Jordan and Commander in Chief.
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Arthur "Big Boy" Spires was an American blues singer and guitarist, who recorded for a number of record labels in Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s.... Spires was born in Natchez, Mississippi on February 25, 1912. Although he didn't take up the guitar until the late 1930s, he was proficient enough by 1939 or 1940 to work with Lightnin' Hopkins at the Beer Garden in Yazoo City. In 1943 Spires moved to Chicago, and started playing for house parties, graduating to playing clubs by the early 1950s. Spires was a limited guitarist, and during this time he recruited the young guitarists Louis and David Myers, who later went on to form The Aces, as part of his backing band. By the time of his first recording session for Chess in 1952 Spires was working with a band called the Rocket Four, including Eddie El on guitar and Willie "Big Eyes" Smith on drums or harmonica. The recording session, however, featured a three guitar line-up with Spires, El, and Earl Dranes, supplemented by Smith on maracas on one of the two tracks, "Murmer Low".
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