"...Where my memories began..."

Rosemont Plantation was established by the parents of Jefferson Davis in 1810. They had come from Kentucky to Mississippi then further South to Bayou Teche near Franklin, Louisiana in 1808 - 1809. Jefferson had been born in Christian County Kentucky in 1808 before the move to the Deep South by his parents.

Finding the climate disagreeable in Louisiana they moved to Wilkinson County Mississippi where their older son, Joseph E., had settled. Upon their arrival to the Mississippi Territory they received a U.S. patent on approximately 300 acres of land about a mile east of Woodville, Mississippi. The building of the home was begun and it is there that Jefferson said that "my memories began". Jefferson was two years old. He said that his parents "camped out" while the home was being built.

The house was, for its time, very spacious and designed with great style. Jefferson's mother, Jane Cook Davis, loved flowers and gardens and her granddaughter later wrote that her grandmother was unusual for a woman on the frontier, inasmuch as she cultivated gardens and flowers and had the walks in the yard lined with 'sweet pinks'.