The Briars

A planter's mansion on a bluff above the Mississippi River, built in 1818 for Judge John Perkins and designed by architect Levi Weeks. The land had been granted by Spain to Richard Bacon in 1784, then purchased by Arthur Mahan in 1814. When Perkins's wife died in 1824, he tried to sell but instead rented the house to William Burr Howell — son of New Jersey Governor Richard Howell — and Margaret Kempe Howell from 1828 to 1850. Their daughter Varina grew up here, and on February 26, 1845, she married Jefferson Davis at the Briars. She would become the First Lady of the Confederacy, wed in a house overlooking the river that made Natchez the most prevalent slave-trading city in Mississippi, second in the nation only to New Orleans. Natchez was a center of cotton planters and Mississippi River trade in the antebellum years, its strategic bluff location ensuring its role as a pivotal center of commerce for two centuries. The Briars sits at the high end of that geography — one of the best river-view properties in the city. Walter Irvine purchased it in 1853; his heirs sold it to Emma Augusta Wall in 1927. By the 1970s it belonged to Robert E. Canon and Newton Wilds, and was eventually repurposed as a bed-and-breakfast. In January 2023, Chip and Clara Newman bought it for full restoration, opening it to tours and special events. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since August 24, 1977, the house still takes overnight guests. Check thebriarsnatchez.com for rates.