Smith Coffee Daniell II, a successful cotton planter, completed Windsor in 1861. Daniell owned 21,000 acres of plantation land in Louisiana and Mississippi, but he died in April 1861, only weeks after finishing the mansion. His wife and children continued to live at Windsor and suffered the loss of much of the family's holdings during the Civil War. Windsor's basic style was Greek Revival with added details borrowed from Italianate and Gothic architecture. The house contained 23 rooms, with an above-ground basement, two residential floors, and an attic. An ell-shaped extension on the east side, attached to a single row of columns extending from the main square, contained the kitchen, pantry, and dining room. Rainwater stored in large tanks in the attic supplied two bathrooms, and a cupola centered on the roof provided a view of the Mississippi River. The mansion survived the Civil War but was destroyed by an accidental fire on February 17, 1890, leaving only the columns and ironwork. One flight of metal stairs from Windsor is now installed at Oakland Chapel on the campus of nearby Alcorn State University. The Daniell family's photographs and drawings of the mansion were lost in the fire, but in 1991 historians discovered a drawing of Windsor sketched in 1863 by a Union soldier in Major General Ulysses S. Grant's army. Descendants of the Daniell family donated Windsor Ruins to the State of Mississippi in 1974, and the site is administered today by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
