Intersection of South Broadway and Washington streets
Edelweiss is a Swiss Chalet-style building which dates to 1883. The house offered both a great view of the Mississippi River and a convenient location for the family of its first owner, Joseph O'Brien, a coal-dealer at Natchez Under-the-Hill. The design of the house comes from an 1875 architectural pattern book. Books like this provided ideas for buildings in the past, just as today's house plan and builder's magazines influence modern home design.
Peter and Eliza Little gave part of the Rosalie property to the Methodist Church for the 1852 construction of The Parsonage. Like its neighbors, the house rests upon a raised basement to provide a view over the edge of the bluff to the Mississippi River below. At the end of the Civil War, the Methodist Church sold The Parsonage as a private home. Natchez has several historic buildings that housed clergymen. The Methodists refer to their minister's house as a "parsonage", while Presbyterians use the Scottish term "manse." A priest of the Roman Catholic or Episcopal Church resides in a "rectory."
Sawmill owner Peter Little built Rosalie in 1823, naming it for the French fort that once stood on a hill behind the house. Andrew L. Wilson bought the house in the late 1850s. The Union Army used it as their headquarters after they occupied Natchez in July 1863. Wilson family members deeded Rosalie in 1938 to the Mississippi State Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, who operate it as a house museum open to the public. The house still contains the Wilson family's 1850s home furnishings.