Merrehope

Merrehope began as a small house that Juriah Jackson and her husband built on land her father, the early settler Richard McLemore, deeded her in 1858. It served as headquarters for General Leonidas Polk and was one of six Meridian homes left standing after Sherman's raid. S. H. Floyd bought it in 1904 and remodeled it into the 26-room mansion. In the 1930s it was cut into eight apartments and ran as a boarding house into the 1960s. The Meridian Restorations Foundation bought it in 1968 and coined the name from Meridian Restorations and hope.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Meridian Civil Rights Trail — 0.5 mi
  An 18-stop self-guided trail through Meridian, from the Black business district and the 1964 Freedom Summer office to Wechsler School, the federal courthouse and James Chaney's grave.
• Jimmie Rodgers Museum — 0.6 mi
  The museum in Meridian that holds the guitar of the Singing Brakeman, Jimmie Rodgers, the first inductee of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
• Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience — 0.7 mi
  Meridian's two-level museum of Mississippi artists and entertainers, opened in 2018, with a Hall of Fame and a Walk of Fame that leads to it from the Riley Center.
• Highland Park Dentzel Carousel — 0.9 mi
  The last two-row stationary Dentzel menagerie in the world, in its original carousel house in Meridian's Highland Park, a National Historic Landmark since 1987.

More markers nearby

• Carnegie Branch Library for Blacks — 0.3 mi
• Wechsler School — 0.4 mi
• Temple Theater — 0.4 mi
• Meridian Rhythm & Blues and Soul Music — 0.5 mi