In the ship-yard stood the Master...From Pascagoula's sunny bay

The Longfellow House was built in 1850 by Captain Daniel Smith Graham, a wealthy New Orleans slave trader and occasional pirate. After construction the captain continued with his sea-faring duties leaving his wife to keep up the mansion. As time passed the captain died mysteriously, the Civil War came and went, and Mrs. Graham moved away.

After Mrs. Graham's death the house went through a series of owners, In 1902 it was purchased by the Pollock Family who named it Bellevue although locals usually referred to it as the Pollock House. The plantation's biggest renovation occurred after Bob Ingalls came to town in 1938 and started Ingalls Shipbuilding. He needed an upscale place where visiting dignitaries could stay and changed the name to Longfellow House to reflect the popular notion, gained from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, The Building of the Ship, that the poet had been inspired to write while staying here. Those lines are the subtitle at the top of this panel. From the 1950s through the 1990s the property was operated as a country club with rooms and cabanas for rent and even a nine-hole golf course. There were subsequent changes of ownership and now the house is, once again, a private residence.

There are several legends associated with heLongfellow House that enhance its mystique. Reports of unexplained
noises and objects that mysteriously change their location lead to tales of haunting with speculation that the cause is the ghost of a slave who died as a result of mistreatment by Mrs. Graham. Her husband's pirating proclivities required a place to store the treasure, and this legend has led to periodic hole digging and wall demolition around the property but no gold has ever been found. As for the Longfellow poem connection, there is no evidence of Longfellow coming to this area. He was a New Englander, which had its own shipbuilding tradition, and he probably heard of Pascagoula as a source of large timber for sailing ship masts and a place replete with its own shipyards. Regardless of whether or not the legends are true, one thing is a fact: The Longfellow House remains an iconic symbol for the Pascagoula beachfront.


[Photo caption]: Longfellow House from 1940 postcard

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