The year was 1847 when the Asheford plantation stood prominently along the Mississippi River near Natchez
The year was 1847 when the Asheford plantation stood prominently along the Mississippi River near Natchez , its grand manor house with imposing white columns overlooking nearly 900 acres of cotton fields. Thomas Ashford, a man of considerable wealth and influence, lived there with his wife Catherine, continuing a family legacy that had spanned three generations in those halls. Yet within 18 months of that spring, every member of the Asheford bloodline would be gone. The estate abandoned and their family name erased from county records. What began behind the closed doors of that grand house would birth something the community could neither understand nor forgive. An event that would unravel everything the Asheford name represented. To understand how such devastation came to pass, one must look back to the marriage itself, documented in Adams County records from October 1843, when Thomas, then 32 years of age, wed Katherine Brennan, the 27year-old daughter of a prominent Charleston Merch...