Stop 14 Melrose Barn

Melrose Barn

NPS Archives

Quick Facts

Location:

Natchez National Historical Park

Designation:

National Historic Landmark

Amenities

3 listed

Audio Description, Cellular Signal, Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits

An estate such as Melrose held an assortment of livestock used for work and pleasure. This included finely bred riding and carriage horses that were stabled in this barn. The enslaved servants used oxen, mules, and draft horses to pull wagons and for plowing the vegetable gardens. Milk cows were a necessity, providing dairy products for the estate. Poultry was plentiful. Chickens, ducks, geese, turkey, and guinea fowl were given free roam of the grounds or kept in separate poultry houses and pens. All these animals would have been cared for by the enslaved people living in the nearby cabins. This white frame structure was originally referred to as a stable where horses and mules were quartered, and some milk cows were kept. Feed and equipment were also stored here.

In the 1900s, the Kellys owned one of the first automobiles in Natchez. They no longer needed riding or carriage horses. They operated a more intensive dairy operation on the estate, so they remodeled the barn to include stalls for milking cows on a larger scale. Servants living on the estate such as Jane Johnson and Alice Sims kept their own livestock on the back part of the property and sold their own dairy products in town. They used a separate, unpainted barn a short distance away.

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