Between Flora and Canton, just North of Highway 22 sits an antebellum plantation home that has housed four generations of the Howard family and has roots that extend 176 years into the past.
The Sedgewood Plantation manor house was built in 1842 and designed by acclaimed southern architect William Nichols, whose other credits include the Mississippi Governor’s Mansion, the Old Capitol building in Jackson and the Lyceum Building at Ole Miss. The house is an 1842 Greek Revival raised cottage with a center hall floor plan that is typical for homes built in the antebellum period.
Dr. Bill Howard grew up at Sedgewood and later restored the manor house in the early 1990s. Family legend holds that one of his great-great grandfathers, likely Rev. Thomas Griffin, was a guest at the house warming.
“To me, Sedgewood's story is one of riches to rags and then redemption again after many years of hard times. Sedgewood's crowning glory is for it to be preserved in perpetuity and to be recognized as both a U.S. National Register of Historic Places property and as a Mississippi Historic Landmark,” Howard said.
Howard’s family came to the Mississippi territory in 1798, where one of his ancestors and Reverend Griffin’s father in law, John Ford, was one of three on the committee that wrote the first state constitution in 1817. By 1833, his family had set roots in Madison County and in 1901 his grandfather Percy O’Leary Howard moved to Sedgewood Plantation and farmed cotton there for the rest of his life. After Percy died, his son John W.G. Howard, Bill Howard’s father, took over the farming operation and added Angus cattle in 1930.
Now, the Howards still run Angus cattle on the place but rent the cotton land out to a neighboring farmer. It is a family-run operation, largely consisting of Howard, his wife Nancy, and sister-in-law Judy Moyers. Past help has included their son, Dr. John Howard, and two daughters Dr. Ann Howard Hinds and Ashley Howard Schurch, all three of which are now married and currently live out of state. The lack of help does not appear to slow down Howard and company who now run about 200 head of cattle.
Bill, Nancy, and Judy Moyers manage and do all the work required to keep the farm going.
Sedgewood was originally a 1,200-acre cotton plantation.
The house and its 1,200 acres survived the Civil War, the Great Depression, and other threats and remained intact until World War II broke out. In 1942 the United States Army returned to Mississippi to build the Kearney Park Military Ordnance Plant. The Ordnance Plant took 500 acres from Sedgewood Plantation and drew a new property line that went right through the middle of the manor house.
The Army told Howard’s father to move the house or they would demolish it. After an appeal to save the home was denied, Bill’s father moved the house to prevent it from being demolished. The house was jacked up, put on logs that rolled on wood beams oriented in the direction of travel. Over the course of a few days, with the help of a mule and some pulleys, the house was rolled the approximately 80 feet over the line.
The chimneys crumbled and horse-hair reinforced plaster ceilings and walls shattered and fell. Structurally, the house was still intact, but the move severely damaged it. The house was saved from total destruction but it would be decades before the home would again resemble its prior glory.
Bill and Nancy planned for years to restore the derelict home back to its former glory. Finally, they made it happen and completed the two year restoration process in 1994.
The home was moved to its original location on the property, this time with heavy equipment and the help of professional movers. The restoration drew on the valuable input of Ken P’pool, Director of Historic Preservation for Mississippi Department for Archives and History, and Mimi Miller with the Historic Natchez Foundation and the ample talents of Michael Collins, a restoration contractor from Jackson, and Kenneth Ross, the lead carpenter from Flora.
Restoration challenges included finding the hard-heart cypress like originally used throughout the house and restoring the original stain glass windows in the entryway which was missing many glass panels. This task fell to Nancy’s “jack-of-all-trades” sister, Judy Moyers, who replaced the missing panels with glass that matched the color and style, but was a little bit more opaque and differentiates the old from the new.
The family was able to move into the home in late-1994.
“Nancy and I have a great sense of pride and accomplishment in bringing this architectural and historical jewel back from the brink of destruction. We want it to last another 176 years,” Howard said.
After the restoration was finished, Sedgewood was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. Todd Sanders with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History later did research that determined the house was designed by the architect William Nichols.
Bill documented the restoration process with both video and photographs. Later, when Bob Vila featured Sedgewood on his HGTV series “Restore America,” he extensively used those images for his segment on Sedgewood. The Bob Vila video can be viewed on the farm website at www.SedgewoodAngus.com .
In order to preserve Sedgewood Plantation for generations to come, the Howards placed a Preservation Easement on the manor house and the remaining 700 acres of the original 1,200-acre plantation. This means the house and 700 acres can never be separated or subdivided in the future.
“No residential or commercial construction can ever be done on the place. The house will remain unaltered and will forever be attached to its 700 acres which will always remain agricultural,” Howard said. “No developer can later come along and butcher the place to make a housing development or a strip mall.”
As a result, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History recently designated Sedgewood Plantation as a Mississippi Historic Landmark.
