ABERDEEN, Miss. – The historic Adams French mansion – a magnificent, 7,000-square-foot antebellum home on the National Register of Historic Places, situated on four bucolic acres atop the highest elevated point in Aberdeen – is for sale, for $750,000 (or best offer). The buyer would also have the option of purchasing the home’s top-quality furnishings from the period.
The seller is the mansion’s sole occupant – Dwight Stevens, the owner of Stevens Auction Company, based in Aberdeen. After acquiring the house in 2002, and until 2006, when a fire to the roof forced a two-year renovation, Mr. Stevens regularly conducted his auctions there. “The mansion was the site of many million-dollar auctions,” he said. “I have some great memories.”
The mansion was built starting in 1856 by Col. John Cox, a wealthy plantation owner who was also in the lumber business. Many plantation owners at the time built opulent homes like Adams French for their wives. In Col. Cox’s case, he built the home for his only daughter, Mary Jane. It took less than two years to complete, thanks to Mr. Cox’s sawmill, which supplied the lumber.
In 1857, Mary Jane married Robert Adams, a local banker, and the two moved into the Greek Revival home upon its completion. It was considered an architectural wonder for its time, with a prime location located just three blocks from Aberdeen’s Main Street. The four acres of grounds were beautifully landscaped then, as they are today, with formal gardens, fountains and statuary. The buyer would also have the option of purchasing the home’s top-quality furnishings from the period. The purchase price includes a former church, first built in 1905 about four miles away by freed slaves who called it the James Creek Missionary Baptist Church. When Mr. Stevens learned that a group was looking to tear the church down, in 2005, he offered to move the structure instead to his mansion grounds. The move was documented on an episode of the Home & Garden channel.
The mansion features five bedrooms, five bathrooms, a modern updated kitchen and a formal parlor that opens into a formal dining room. The basement has been made into a full gym, while the third floor boasts a home theater, giant closets, a spare bedroom and a bathroom. An elevator travels from the basement to the second floor, a feature the Coxes couldn’t imagine in the 1850s.
In 1872, Robert Adams passed away, and Mary Jane eventually re-married, to a local physician whose last name was French (hence the name the Adams French mansion). Dr. French passed away in 1887 and Mary Jane lived the rest of her life in the mansion, twice-widowed. She never had children.
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