Mount Holly, Italianate plantation house in Foote, United States.
Mount Holly was a two-story, thirty-two-room red-brick plantation mansion in Foote, Washington County, Mississippi, on the eastern shore of Lake Washington. Built in 1855 in the Italianate style, it burned down on June 17, 2015; the ruins remain privately owned.
The land was patented by John C. Miller in 1831 and sold in 1833 to Henry Johnson and Elizabeth Julia Flournoy. Their widowed daughter Margaret Johnson Erwin Dudley bought 1,699 acres in 1854 for $100,000, and after marrying Dr. Charles Wilkins Dudley in 1855 he commissioned the red-brick, thirty-two-room Italianate mansion, built with enslaved labor. The Dudleys hosted Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman; Hezekiah William Foote bought the estate in the 1880s, and it burned down on June 17, 2015.
The house's historical marker, placed on an outside wall by the Mississippi State Society of the National Society of Colonial Dames XVII Century on October 10, 1998, calls Mount Holly "Ca. 1856" and an example of Italianate style in the Mississippi Delta. It records that the house was built for Margaret (Johnson) Erwin Dudley and served as headquarters for relief committees during the 1927 flood.
Mount Holly stands in Foote, Washington County, on the eastern shore of Lake Washington; the address in Hollandale is not supported by the sources. The mansion burned on June 17, 2015, and the ruins are privately owned, so the grounds are not open for tours or walking trails. View the site only from the public road.
Writer Shelby Foote used the estate as the setting for his first novel Tournament, published in 1949. The book helped bring attention to the location within Mississippi Delta literary circles.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 93,465 contributors worldwide.