Prospect Hill Plantation

The Prospect Hill Plantation was a 5,000-acre plantation in Jefferson County, Mississippi owned by Isaac Ross, Revolutionary War veteran from South Carolina. He developed it for cotton culture in the antebellum era. Worried about slavery, in 1830 he was a co-founder with other major planters of the Mississippi Colonization Society, a chapter that planned to relocate freed slaves from the state to the new colony in West Africa.

In 1836 Ross died; his will freed those slaves who agreed to relocate to the colony in Africa established by the American Colonization Society, and provided for sale of his plantation to fund their move. His will was contested and litigated by a grandson and heir who occupied the plantation while the court case and appeals were litigated. The will was finally upheld by the Mississippi Supreme Court in 1845. That year the mansion had burned down and a girl died in the fire. About a dozen slaves suspected as responsible were lynched.

The plantation was finally sold and approximately 300 slaves were freed and transported by 1848 to what was called Mississippi-in-Africa on the coast of what became Liberia. They and their descendants were among the Americo-Liberian elite that held power into the late 20th century.

In the 1850s Ross' grandson Isaac Ross Wade reacquired the Prospect Hill property, building a second plantation great house in 1854. Wade/Ross descendants occupied the house until 1956, and it was occupied by others until 1968. This mansion still stands today. In 2011 the plantation and house were acquired by the Archeological Conservancy for preservation of the total property. It is expected to yield artifacts that will contribute to the story of slavery in the United States, as well as to African-American culture and the diaspora.

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