The ruins of the Windsor Plantation. Once considered one of the most stately mansions on the Mississippi River, if not the entire South. So majestic that it even inspired Walt Whitman to write about it.¹ Built between 1859-1861 by Smith Coffee Daniell II, it was the main house of a 2600 acre plantation built on land that once comprised Judge Bruin’s land grant. During the US Civil War it was the first house Union troops encountered after landing about one mile west of Windsor at Bruinsburg during the second Vicksburg Campaign. It survived the war only to be destroyed in 1890 by a careless house guest and his cigar.²

1. http://www.nps.gov/archive/vick/vcmpgn/windsor.htm [↩]
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_Ruins [↩]