Pontotoc, MS, 38863-9345 US / MS
Lochinvar is an antebellum plantation house near Pontotoc, Mississippi built by Robert Gordon c. 1836. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Architecture The house's heart pine woodwork and handmade bricks highlight the attention to detail of its wealthy owner and the Scottish architects and builders he employed. Solid Doric style columns from a castle in Scotland support the front porches, and the balcony railing is carved to resemble English lace. An entirely self-supporting spiral staircase winds to the second floor, and a secret stairway is set between the walls in the back of the house. History Gordon bought this land from a Chickasaw woman, Molly Gunn, daughter of William Colbert and his wife. She was married to James Gunn. Robert Gordon had immigrated to Cotton Gin Port, Mississippi, from Scotland. He excelled as a trader in the Native American communities and a landowner, and founded the town of Aberdeen in Monroe County, Mississippi. After the Chickasaw Cession of 1832, he purchased two sections of land near Pontotoc, where he built Lochinvar in 1836. He married Mary Elizabeth Walton. Their son, James Gordon, grew up in the house. He married Carolina Virginia Wiley, and they had two children, Annie and Robert James. A planter, James Gordon served as an officer in the Confederate Army under Jeb Stuart and Nathan Bedford Forrest. He was briefly suspected of conspiring with John Wilkes Booth in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. James Gordon became a politician, representing Chickasaw County in the Mississippi legislature in 1857, 1878, 1886, and 1904–1908. In December 1909 Governor Edmond F. Noel appointed him to fill the unexpired term of U.S. Senator Anselm J. McLaurin until the state legislature could elect a new senator in February 1910. (This was prior to popular election of US Senators.) James Gordon had inherited Lochinvar when his father died in 1867. Lochinvar remained in the Gordon family until 1900, when J. D. Fontaine, an attorney in Pontotoc, Mississippi, bought it to use as a tenant house. The black-and-white photo on this page was taken during a stage of poor maintenance. In 1966 Dr. Forrest Tutor and his wife, Dr. Janis Burns Tutor, purchased the house from Fontaine's son and restored it. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Heavily damaged by a tornado in 2001, Lochinvar has been restored by the Tutors to its former glory. In 1832 the United States by a treaty with the Chickasaw Indians acquired possession of all the lands owned by them in Mississippi, excepting certain reservations which were afterwards sold to the whites when the tribe moved to the Indian Territory. Robert Gordon, a younger son of an ancient Scotch family, visiting America in search of adventure, was present and signed the treaty as a witness. He was a gentleman of culture and fine business ability. Although he came to America on a pleasure trip, he was so pleased with the country he concluded to remain and become an American citizen. He soon afterward married Miss Elizabeth Walton, the daughter of a Virginian who belonged to a family distinguished for patriotism during the Revolutionary war; one of the Waltons was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. When the United States Land Office was located at Pontotoc, Mr. Gordon located there also; and, being a thrifty Scotchman, by speculating in lands he soon accumulated a handsome estate. Two sections became his by purchase, one of them he bought from an Indian woman named Molly Gunn and it was deeded by her to his infant son, James Gordon. Upon this section he built a handsome house situated on the highest hill in Pontotoc county, overlooking a beautiful table-land surrounded by hills and valleys covered with maj estic trees of every variety known to this climate, through whose shadows silvery streams from an hundred gushing fountains flowed on to the sea. The stately mans
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