🎄🎄🎄🎄2009 December 6, Saturday, Belle Mont Mansion Tuscumbia and Walking tour of Mooresville, AL

Two of my grandchildren and I rode to the Belle Mont Mansion in Tuscumbia for the Plantation Christmas Event. 

This event offers entertainment and raises funds for further renovations of the Mansion, which it desperately needs. 

It is a Jeffersonian-style plantation home built in 1828 for Doctor Mitchell and sold to the prominent Winston family of Tuscumbia. 

The family abandoned it, and it soon began to deteriorate. In 1983, the house and 33 acres were donated to the Alabama Historical Commission.

I parked my car along the wheat fields and several other vehicles.

There was a bus shuttling people to the Mansion, but my grandchildren and I walked along the gravel road to the Mansion.

As we started up the gravel road, we saw the historic marker that read.

Belle Mont Marker

Belle Mont Marker

Built between 1828 and 1832, Belle Mont is a foremost example of Jeffersonian Palladian Architecture in the Deep South and one of Alabama's first great plantation houses. 

It was built for Dr. Alexander W. Mitchell, a native of Virginia, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and one of the first large-scale planters and slaveholders in this area. 

In 1833, Mitchell sold this 1,680-acre plantation to another Virginian Native, Isaac Winston. Winston, a prominent planter and strong supporter of the Confederacy, was the uncle of Alabama's first native-born Governor, John Anthony Winston. Belle Monte remained in the hands of Winston's heirs until 1941. 

In 1983, the house and 33 surrounding acres were donated to the Alabama Historical Commission.

Belle Monte Mansion Christmas 2009

The Mansion's front door was decorated with a green wreath with gold balls and a red ribbon. The white handrail was adorned with greenery, featuring red bows and orange-red and green balls. Greenery was also above the door and on the second-floor front porch.

Inside the Mansion, green vines wound along the staircase leading to the second floor. Vines, green plants, and red apples were over the fireplace and on other pieces of furniture.

There were women dressed in beautiful white and red ball gowns and men in black suits.

In the dining area, a long table features a silver bowl full of greenery, a silver teapot filled with hot cider, and a silver bowl filled with punch. There were several silver trays of finger food. 

Women dressed in Red and White Christmas Ball Gowns. 

We drank a cup of punch and helped ourselves to the finger food. 

On the walls were paintings of family members who had once gracefully walked through the rooms of this Mansion, and a painting of the Mansion was sitting on an easel.

 Finger foods

Belle Monte 

Every room had a curator, filling our heads with the plantation's history.

Scott's book, Lady of the Lake, was placed on a bedside table in one of the bedrooms. 

Men in suits and women in red and white holiday ball gowns were gathered in the family room. A couple of women were playing Christmas tunes on flutes.

We walked upstairs, where a display case showed the construction and layout of the Mansion in its grander years.

We finished our tour and walked outside to get a better view of the three chimneys, the two towers, six white columns, and then the front porch. The house was built out of red brick, with six windows on the west side and four on the front, with two front doors. The backside of the house had a root cellar, with a large landing of stairs leading to the ground. It had a large back porch, two bedrooms, and doors leading outside.

This was to get easy access to the outhouse.

Belle Monte Mansion Back porch 

Entrance to the Dining Room @ Belle Monte Mansion

Brick Church in Mooresville

Refreshments at Brick Church, Mooresville

Post Office in Mooresville

Historic homes in Mooresville

My grandkids and I rode to Mooresville to take the Christmas Walking tour. 

We toured the Post Office, the Stagecoach Inn, the Tavern, and the Brick Church. 

We walked up and down the streets of the small community, enjoying the Christmas decorations. 

The Brick Church was open for the tour, so we stepped inside and enjoyed a cup of hot cider and a woman playing the piano.
The Post Office was opened for the tour, and the employees showed how it worked. The post office is still used by the community.
The old tavern was opened with a fire in the fireplace, greenery on the mantel, and a small library of books in the back room.

Stage Coach Stop 

The tour ended at 5:00 P.M. By that time, it was cold and dark outside.
The grandkids and I loaded into my car, and I drove home. 

I spent a wonderful day with two of my grandchildren. We learned about the local history of the Belle Mont Mansion and the historic town of Mooresville. I took many pictures and hope the grandkids remember our time on both tours.

We saw several historical markers telling the history of Mooresville. 

Mooresville Incorporated in 1818

The post office contains original call boxes 

Old tavern, 1817, used as a stagecoach stop

Red Brick Methodist Church 1817

U. S. Gen. James A Garfield was stationed here in 1862

The white frame church is more than a century old 

Andrew Johnson was apprenticed to a tailor here

Neoclassic architecture

1971 by Alabama Society Daughters of the American Revolution 

Mooresville, Alabama, Incorporated November 16, 1818

Mooresville Post Office, c.1840, is Alabama's oldest operational post office. It has served the community in the same building since it was constructed to sawmill lumber in 1840. The mailboxes and office furnishings are even older, having been transferred from the original post office in the Stagecoach Tavern. The mailboxes are numbered 1-48; some families have had the exact box numbers for several generations. The building is owned and maintained by the Town of Mooresville.

Mooresville Stagecoach Inn and Tavern

The Stagecoach Inn and Tavern were built c.1820 and served as the post office before the current post office was constructed around 1840. An Act of Congress on March 13, 1818, authorized mail delivery to and from neighboring Huntsville, necessitating the establishment of a post office in Moores. On the same day, a road was built between the two towns, and horse and rider carried the mail. The Stagecoach Inn and Tavern were listed on Tanner's Post Map of 1825 with supper priced at "2 bits." The original post office was located on the right side of the building, and mail may have been deposited and received through the small window. This window is also believed to have been used for the after-hours sale of liquor. The first floor was a standard room with an outside stairway leading to two sleeping rooms on the second floor. The Stagecoach Tavern is currently used as a museum and the official town hall.

Mooresville Brick Church

Completed by 1839, this Greek Revival Structure was under construction for several years. On November 18, 1838, Alabama's 2nd Governor, Thomas Bibb, and his wife Pamela deeded this property to William K. Adams, Monroe F. Moses, and, on November 18, trustees of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. This denomination retained the title but, over the years, permitted the Baptists and Methodists to meet here.

Outstanding religious leaders who preached here included Cumberland Presbyterian "Father" Robert Donnell, the early leader, and Constantine Blackmon Sanders, known as the "X+Y=Z Preacher," as well as Methodist Clare Purcell, later Bishop of the North Alabama, West Florida, and Central Conferences.

National Register of Historic Places Mooresville Historic District 4/13/72

The Cumberland Presbyterian Church

This faith was organized in Dickson County, Tenn., on February 4, 1810, as an outgrowth of the Great Religious Revival of 1800. Its founders were ministers of the Presbyterian Church who rejected the doctrine of election and reprobation. They formulated and published a "Brief Statement" setting forth the points wherein Cumberland Presbyterians dissented from the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Robert Donnell, one of the church's founding fathers, was preaching in this area as early as 1810. In about 1834, he moved from Tennessee to Mooresville and was primarily responsible for the early growth of the faith locally.

Mary Ann Walton, a local benefactor, died in 1899, bequeathing much of her estate in trust to the Presbytery. The Alabama Supreme Court contested and upheld her will three times in Woodroof v. Hundley.