Natchez Garden Club was making plans to host the annual convention of the Mississippi Federation of Garden Clubs. The agenda was vast with planned entertainment, meetings, and other activities for the delegates. One of the highlights was to be a tour of the many established old-fashioned gardens usually bursting into the peak of their bloom at this time. Unfortunately, a late freeze spoiled the beauty of the gardens; and the members, anxious to showcase their town and impress their visitors, proposed that a tour of several of Natchez’s historic homes would provide a stellar substitute. According to Blankenstein, “Modest homeowners protested there was nothing to see. However, hospitality demanded that their guests be received; and they graciously threw open their doors. Mrs. Etta Henry, State President of Mississippi Federated Garden Clubs declared in her speech to the delegates, ‘These fascinating historic mansions must not remain hidden from the world any longer,’ sentiments which were echoed by the entire convention. As Mrs. Roane Fleming Byrnes wrote some years later, ‘The Natchez Pilgrimage had begun, and nobody knew it.’ The membership of fifty-seven women with $50.00 in their account rode this initial enthusiasm and began to make plans for a Pilgrimage Week the following year. The energy behind their marketing strategy was remarkable as the booklet recounts: “They wrote letters to Federated Garden Clubs and articles for state and national garden club publications, automobile associations, travel bureaus, trade magazines, and newspaper articles since these could get accepted without paying a fee. They created pamphlets, folders, and posters and displayed them everywhere. They set up committees for tours, tickets, transportation (twelve cars in all), and decorations.” However, the year 1932 was a bad year for the country; the depths of the depression were at their worst. While skeptics touted that it would be impossible to attract many people to a community of which most people had never heard, the ladies continued their preparations. Twenty-five homes were to welcome the
public with tour tickets priced at $2.00 for daily tours. A parade was planned, Azalea Queens and Japonica Kings were selected, and historical tableaux were created hoping for a local audience. (The first year there were two sets of royalty, a day king and queen for the parade and an evening king and queen presented at the pageant/tableaux and grand ball.) Historic homeowners all pitched in to contribute to this first purposed springtime pilgrimage to showcase not just Natchez homes but Natchez hospitality. David McKittrick of Elms Court created an annual affair by
Natchez story. The clubs have celebrated their 25th and 50th and 75th anniversaries of Spring Pilgrimage throughout the decades with special events and international and national notoriety. Moreover, through their efforts to preserve the historic structures, their work for the beautification of the city through their gardening efforts, and their organization of events for economic growth, these clubs have become a signature cooperative of volunteers recognized for their strength of purpose and their continuing catalog of accomplishments. Across the years in both clubs, the hallowed records and notebooks of the wisdom gained and the lessons learned have been passed down from one generation to the next, as club members embrace an expanding and more eclectic membership, adjust to the expectations of increasing numbers of new visitors, adopt new means and methods of telling the Natchez story, and broaden the scope of the story to include all of Natchez’s people and their contribution to the history of the houses and the town. Alana Coons, Education and Communications Director Natchez Garden Club members who worked on the first Spring Pilgrimage at Save Our Heritage Organisation in San Diego, California, the state’s oldest historic welcoming guests on the first evening to the preservation group, in an email to Anne “Ball of a Thousand Candles” at his home. MacNeil of Elms Court, praised the fledgling The Women’s Cooperative Clubs, of which efforts of those who organized Natchez’s first the Natchez Garden Club was a member, had a spring pilgrimages as the “story of a small group barbeque on the grounds of Auburn. A cotillion of women on the heels of the great depression was held in the Natchez Hotel, and a pageant [who] saw the value of these historic places as with a ball was presented in Memorial Hall a means to help themselves and the economy When pilgrimage week concluded, having of their town as it continued to depress. They entertained 1,500 visitors from 37 states, recognized they had something special to offer Blankenstein explains, “The members quickly the world that might subsidize maintenance of realized that their future lay in what they knew their homes and gardens and in doing so, they best, welcoming visitors into their homes. saved a city. That many of the same families During their next meeting, the club made a are still at it 90 years later is remarkable to me. motion to make Garden Pilgrimage Week I read about the amazing Natchez homes that an annual affair and the Natchez Pilgrimage are gone, and it makes me think about how was born.” much more might surely have been lost if not Over the years, one garden club evolved for the Pilgrimage program.” into two garden clubs, The Natchez Garden Today’s tour of homes welcomes guests Club and Pilgrimage Garden Club. Since 1946, with Southern hospitality and shares with them the two clubs have worked tirelessly together the unfolding story of the times—information to promote Natchez to the world, to tell their Bluffs & Bayous { March/April 2022 { Page 51
