John's Journal...

Mississippi’s Lenoir Plantation – Ghosts, Deer, Hogs, War-Between-the-States History, Thoroughbreds and Quarter-Horse Training and Much More

Why the Pattersons Bought the Plantation and the Land

Click to enlargeEditor’s Note: I was fortunate enough to attend the first outdoor writer hunt ever held on Lenoir Plantation in Prairie, Mississippi, during December, 2009. This privately-held land never has been opened to the public, but it will be open in the fall of 2010 to a limited number of guests and offer hunting for deer, hogs, coons and ducks as well as fishing. But the story of Lenoir Plantation is as interesting as the game that abounds there. At this lovely antebellum home, two-different families lived and worked – the white side and the African-American side of the Lenoir family. Even today, descendants from both sides still live in the area. The Patterson family recently has purchased Lenoir Plantation, and this week, Beau Patterson will tell us about Lenoir Plantation’s history and what it will offer guests when it opens to the public in the fall of 2010.Click to enlarge

“Why did you buy the Lenoir Plantation?” I asked. “We’ve always known about the plantation through a friend of ours, Lynn Davis, who owned it prior to us,” Beau Patterson says. “We saw that time was really weighing heavily on this old structure, and we felt it should be preserved and used. There are very-few things left in this country that go back to the early days of our history. There’s value in old things, and we believe there’s value in knowing and preserving the history of the South. We’re about 85 percent completed with the restoration, which includes the property as well as the house. We want to restore the plantation to a working farm, including raising crops and thoroughbred horses and boarding and training quarter horses. There are 592 tillable acres on the property, and we plan to put that acreage back into corn and soybean production in 2010. The crops will complement our hunting. We intend to have a very-limited number of hunters annually. We plan to host many outdoor events, such as the Hunting Retriever Club trials in September, 2010. The club plans to bring 300 people and conduct retriever field trials here. Click to enlarge

“We have approximately 18 lakes on the property that are loaded with fish. So we’ll be offering fishing opportunities to our guests during the spring turkey season and throughout the summer and early fall. The mansion also will be used as a bed and breakfast during football season for many of the home games for Mississippi State University. Within the next 10 years, I hope we’ll have our row-crop program in full production. We’re working closely with Mississippi State in Starkville, Mississippi, to develop a wildlife-management program to not only improve our deer herd through quality-deer management but also to bring back the traditional bobwhite quail that once were so abundant here. We’ll be working on a bobwhite-quail restoration program with the university and Mississippi’s Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. One day, we hope to have wild quail huClick to enlargents as well as possibly a shooting preserve here on our land. We want to create an atmosphere of the Old South here with all of the wildlife that was once on the property. There are quite a few antebellum homes throughout the South, however few true plantation homes remain. Most of the plantation homes were burned by northern forces. But possibly because the Lenoir plantation was used as a hospital, it was spared. Most antebellum homes were homes that were built in larger towns and cities. True plantation homes were found in rural areas in the old farming sections of the South. That’s what the Lenoir Plantation is. It has always been a working farm and a place to hunt and fish, and we want to continue that tradition. Lenoir Plantation is located in Monroe County just 2-miles north of West Point, Mississippi, off US-45 Alternate Highway. However, our postal address is in Prairie, Mississippi.

“We hosted our first outdoor writers’ hunt in December, 2009, as an exploratory type of event to help us better determine what we need to do for the wildlife and the hunters who will be coming this fall. We plan to be open for non-consumptive use in the spring of 2010 primarily as a bed and breakfast and a place to hold weddings and other events. We also plan to grow the number of acres we have to hunt. Right now we have access to 2,300 acres for hunting, and we’ll be adding more lands for hunting in the future.”

Lenoir Plantation will be open to guests in the fall of 2010. For more information about the hunting, the fishing, the house and the old plantation, contact Beau Patterson at Bpatterson4888@gmail.com or (662) 202-4888.

Visit www.mississippi.org to learn more about Mississippi's outdoor places.

Tomorrow: The Wildlife at the Lenoir Plantation


Check back each day this week for more about "Mississippi’s Lenoir Plantation – Ghosts, Deer, Hogs, War-Between-the-States History, Thoroughbreds and Quarter-Horse Training and Much More"

Day 1: The Haunting
Day 2: After the Civil War
Day 3: Why the Pattersons Bought the Plantation and the Land
Day 4: The Wildlife at the Lenoir Plantation
Day 5: Lenoir Plantation Today – Contrast in History





 

Entry 540, Day 3