MDAH in 2025: New name in store for Grand Village

By Roscoe Barnes III 

The Natchez Democrat 

Published Sunday, December 29, 2024

Katie Blount, director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, recently announced major plans for historic sites in Natchez and other locations. (Click on image to enlarge.)

NATCHEZ, Miss. -- Katie Blount, director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, announced major plans for multiple historic sites in 2025 -- and later -- that include Windsor Ruins, the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians, and Historic Jefferson College, among others.

 
The Grand Village will be renamed the Natchez Tribal History Center. Windsor Ruins will have new signs and a new interpretation, and Jefferson College will be restored and serve as an interpretive center and preservation field school.
 
Blount also outlined plans for the Margaret Ann Crigler Park, which will be adjacent to the Two Mississippi Museums in Jackson, the Vicksburg Civil War Project, and an exhibit in 2025 that commemorates the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
 
Blount shared her vision for these sites during a December 18 media roundtable in Jackson. She told the press that Mississippi has important stories to tell and there is a growing number of people who want to hear those stories. This growing interest is having a positive impact on tourism, she said.
 
“We are moving around the state ensuring that our most important stories are told in all their complexity and that we're reaching a broader audience with these stories,” Blount said.
 
She also noted: “I think that there is a consensus among leadership, local and state in this state, that tourism is on the rise for Mississippi and that we have important stories to tell and that people will come and that we'll all have a better understanding of who we are and where we've come from.”
 
Windsor Ruins
 
“When we opened the Two Museums in 2017, we knew that our next priority really needed to be our sites around the state,” Blount said, noting the sites around the state needed MDAH’s attention.
 
Attention was first given to Windsor Ruins in rural Claiborne County. Blount said the columns were in danger of falling. But thanks to the state legislature, funds were provided through the Community Heritage Preservation Grant program that allowed them to acquire specialists to stabilize the columns and restore the capitals at the top of the columns. The work is now done, she said.
 
Research and archaeological work has been done at the site to uncover the stories of the enslaved people who lived and worked at Windsor. A new interpretation of the site will be announced early next year. New signs will go up at the site around the beginning of 2025.
 
Grand Village
 
Blount said their next priority was the Grand Village, a National Historic Landmark site that the department has owned since the 1970s. “It’s highly significant, and we had done very little to expand or update the initial interpretation from the ‘70s,” she said. “So we're building a new museum there and a new outdoor pavilion. And we are we're going to add walking trails.”
 
She noted all of the exhibits and interpretation will be new. In addition to the citizens of Natchez, MDAH is working with scholars of Native American history in Mississippi and their tribal partners, she said, adding the lead tribal partner is the Muscogee.
 
The new Grand Village should open in 2028, and when it opens, it will be known as the Natchez Tribal History Center. Blount said their native partners felt it was time to change the name. “’Grand Village’ is what the French knew the site as,” she said. “It’s not really a village.”
 
According to Blount, “Mississippi has more interesting, consequential, complex history than any other state.” She said one of the most important ways to tell the stories of the people and what happened here is to preserve the places where they happened.
 
Jefferson College
 
Next on MDAH’s list of priorities is Jefferson College, which Blount described as “the birth place of statehood, where the delegates first gathered to write the first state constitution.”
The college was the state's first institution of higher learning before the public universities opened. It also served briefly as a Freedman's Bureau after the Civil War. In addition to restoring the school’s eight historic buildings, plans include work on the roofs, windows and interiors, and the opening of an interpretive center.
 
The center, she said, will tell the stories that are central to the history of Natchez and to the country. These stories will focus on the cotton boom, slavery, Civil War, Reconstruction, and the aftermath of Reconstruction up to the Civil Rights Movement.
 
The establishment of a historic preservation field school will be another feature of Jefferson College. It will be a place where students can come from area universities, as well as Natchez Adams School District, to get hands-on training in historic preservation trades.
Blount said that while MDAH will continue to work on its programs, including the preservation field schools, “the work on the buildings will take years” to complete. She said it is important to get the buildings in shape before they place exhibits inside.
 
Projected costs
 
When asked about the amount of money being spent on the various projects, Blount provided projected costs for each of them.
 
Since Windsor Ruins is done, there is no need for more funding of the project, she said. And because some of the funds have already been placed into the Grand Village, its total will be less than $25 million. Total cost for the work at Jefferson College “remains to be seen,” as MDAH is just beginning the restoration of the building, Blount said.
 
Blount said the total cost for the projects will include funds they already have on hand. She explained that the money will come in from state, local, and federal government and from private donors.
 
Blount thanked the State Legislature for providing support of all of the projects.
 
Hurricane Katrina
 
Near the end of the meeting, Michael Morris, executive director of the Two Museum, announced plans to tell the story of Hurricane Katrina. He said it was an important event that impacted people in Mississippi and Louisiana.
 
On May 8, 2025, a photographic exhibit on Hurricane Katrina will be displayed at the Two Museums. The photographs were taken by Melody Golding, who is a photographer who's worked with the Smithsonian Institution and etcetera, Morris said. A number of programs on the topic will be held throughout the year, he said.