Haunted Natchez by Alan Brown

Author:Alan Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

Dunleith.

On January 4, 1858, Alfred Vidal Davis purchased Routhland from Charles Dahlgren. He immediately renamed his new home Dunleith. After the Civil War broke out in 1861, Davis formed a volunteer infantry company called the Natchez Rifles. His troop later became part of the Fourteenth Louisiana Infantry. Davis’s wife, Sarah, joined up with her husband’s regiment on the way to Richmond. She left one of her household slaves, Catherine White, in charge of Dunleith in her absence. When Davis returned to Dunleith in 1863, Natchez was under the control of the Yankees. His wife Sarah died two years later.

Dunleith had a number of different owners after the Civil War. Alfred Vidal Davis sold the mansion to Hiram M. Baldwin in 1866. Following Baldwin’s sudden death in 1868, Dunleith was sold to John R. Stockton. In 1886, Dunleith was sold once again, this time to Joseph Neibert Carpenter for $20,000. Carpenter made a fortune by investing in a hardware store, a grocery store, railroad and steamboat lines and cottonseed oil mills. He and his family made generous donations to Natchez schools over the years. The Carpenter family owned Dunleith until 1976.

Dunleith has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1935. In 1976, Dunleith was purchased by William Heins and converted into a bed-and-breakfast. In 1999, Mrs. Edward Worley and her son, Michael Worley, spent a considerable amount of time and money renovating the old mansion. The antebellum mansion’s signature ghost story focuses on a harp that once stood in the front parlor.

Dunleith is haunted by a relative of Mrs. Charles Dahlgren, remembered today only as “Miss Percy.” In her book, 13 Mississippi Ghosts and Jeffrey, writer Kathryn Tucker says that Miss Percy fell in love with a dashing young Frenchman. Some people say that he was a count; others believe that he was a high-ranking French officer. The two were inseparable, and many people believed that a wedding was in the planning stages. One day, the Frenchman professed his undying love for Miss Percy, but the smile on her face immediately turned into a frown when he said that he was going to have to return to France on business. Promising that he would return to her soon, he kissed her and disappeared into the night.

Months passed without a word from her lover. Finally, Miss Percy decided to travel to France to find out why she had not received any letters from her paramour. Several weeks later, Miss Percy returned from Europe, her head bowed in shame. Her lover had fallen in love with someone else in France but did not have the heart to tell Miss Percy. She returned to Dunleith and lived in an upstairs bedroom. Every afternoon, she walked downstairs to the front parlor and strummed melancholy songs on the harp. For years, she repeated this sad ritual before finally dying in Dunleith.

For over a century, people staying at Dunleith claim to have heard the faint tones of harp music coming from the front parlor. When

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