Methodist minister John Ford’s two-story clapboard house, then one of the finest country residences in the Pearl River valley, hosted Andrew Jackson on his way to the Battle of New Orleans in 1814 and the Pearl River Convention in 1816, which fixed the boundaries of the new state of Mississippi. The house’s raised brick basement, broken-slope side-gabled roof, massive end chimneys with stepped bases, nine-over-six sash windows, beaded flush siding under the porches, and chamfered posts are all characteristic of territorial-period houses, as at the House on Ellicott’s Hill (ND44) in Natchez. A two-tiered front gallery faces toward the river and shelters a wooden staircase that probably connected the basement kitchen to the dining room upstairs. The interior has a typical East Coast hall-parlor configuration, with both rooms opening onto the front porch. Two rear cabinet rooms flank a loggia that looks out through a replanted cedar allée.
Mrs. N. D. Deupree included the Ford House in her 1903 series Historic Homes of Mississippi, and the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) photographed it in 1936. In 1963, the Marion County Historical Society bought the house from Ford descendants and undertook a minimal restoration before opening it for visitors. After Hurricane Camille damaged the roof in 1969, a more extensive renovation took place in 1978. In 1997, the Society moved the antebellum Paynes Chapel Methodist Church, the Fords’ church, from across the Pearl River to the property and restored it in 2001. The house is open to the public by appointment.