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WINTER QUARTERS PLANTATION on Lake St. Joseph in Newellton, Louisiana, was restored in 1966-67 by E. R. McDonald of Newellton, who first sensed the historic importance of the house and grounds when he first came to the Delta as a young man after World War I.
The plantation owes its historic claim to history to two facts. On the historic march to Vicksburg, General Ulysses Grant spared this one house on Lake St. Joseph from the fire brand and used it as an overnight campsite during the winter before the big siege. Secondly, the owner of Winter Quarters before the War was a scientific man whose contributions to cotton culture determined the varieties grown in America today.
Winter Quarters was built in three stages during three generations before the Civil War. Mr. McDonald has restored the house as it existed during each of these phases. the first was a three-room cabin with home-made furniture, a "winter quarters" for Job Routh on land he received in a grant from the Spanish in 1803; the second, the six rooms added by Ann Ogden, daughter of Job Routh, who lived in Natchez, Mississippi; and the third, which represents eight spacious rooms added by Dr. Haller Nutt when he purchased the place in 1850.
The personality of the scientific Dr. Haller Nutt, and the plantations he worked, are reflected in this book.
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