Tom Freeland at the North Mississippi Commentor has jumped on the road to his old haunts in southwest Mississippi to see a good chunk of the sites on the recently published 101 Mississippi Places to See Before You Die. So on this Friday morning in early March that already feels kind of like late Spring, head over and read about his adventures and see his pictures in a three-part series, Rapid Ramblings Through Jefferson and Claiborne Counties:

• Jefferson College
• Church Hill and Port Gibson’s Church Street
• Westside, Alcorn, and Rodney

Maybe someone more familiar than me with the fabulous Christ Episcopal Church at Church Hill can help answer the question Tom raises from the description we have posted here on MissPres for the church. The quote in our description comes straight from the National Register nomination, so it seemed like it was authoritative. Here’s the last statement from our description:

Alterations to the exterior structure have been limited to the removal of the paired chimneys, which served an original furnace below the nave, and the disappearance of all corbels from which the drip stones and hammer-beam representations sprang.

Where are the missing corbels?

Only problem is, when you look at the building you can see the minimal corbels, helpfully defined by Thomas Rosell just a couple of weeks ago. If you have Eudora Welty’s Country Churchyards, she has several pictures of the building from the 1930s, and there aren’t any more corbels in her picture than there are in Tom’s pictures. So is the National Register nomination wrong, or were these corbels removed so far back that there aren’t any photos of them easily available? Or is “corbel” used here in a way I don’t understand?

After you’ve solved this puzzle, you can cast your vote for another question Tom raises, namely, if you don’t go inside a building, does it count as “visited”?

Now, once you’ve sat in your chair reading all this, maybe you should start planning a trip to see some of the 101 Places for your own self. Natchez Pilgrimage starts NEXT WEEKEND and it’s non-stop pilgrimage tour time until the end of April.

• Columbus (March 26-April 7)
• Aberdeen (March 30-April 1)
• Vicksburg (April 1-30)
• Holly Springs (April 13-15)

There’s even a historic home tour in Mobile (don’t worry, it’s almost Mississippi).

Many of these tours include places on the 101 List. “Oh dear!” you may exclaim, “How I ever keep track of all these wonderful tours?” Have no fear, MissPresers, let the MissPres calendar be your social calendar, pencil in a day or two and head out to see the Great State of Mississippi!

Categories: 101 MissPres Places, Churches, Heritage Tourism