One of the earliest fully detailed Federal houses in the territory, Linden was built for Thomas and Mary Buck Reed, who arrived in Natchez from Kentucky in 1809 and occupied the house they named Reedland by 1815. Reed served Mississippi as a state attorney general and U.S. senator. In 1829, physician John Ker bought the house and renamed it Linden.
The house today is the product of several additions. The original portion was a two-story single-pile design of five bays, with a central stair hall and three-bay portico. Later one-story wings with jib windows created a nine-bay facade with a full-width gallery. The entrance frontispiece features engaged columns, a deeply projecting cornice, sidelights with muntins forming ovals and hollow-sided diamonds, and an elliptical fanlight. Suspended from the dining room in the western wing (c. 1840) is an elaborate punkah. In 1849, Jane Gustine Conner acquired Linden and subsequently added a detached two-story brick building behind the western wing to serve as a kitchen, laundry, and pantry, with the second story as quarters for enslaved servants.