Dozens of new details of a 200-year history have come to life during the recent renovation of The House on Ellicott Hill, one of Natchez’s premier National Historic Landmarks.

Recognized for more than a century for its spectacular architecture — early native design based on West Indies models with its mansard roof and long galleries, as well as exquisite interior details that are the oldest of their kind among existing historic Natchez houses — the house now gains status in another way, said Elizabeth Boggess, who has helped to oversee the extensive renovation at the Natchez Garden Club-owned house on South Canal Street.

“This was the most important house on Canal Street, the old front street of the town,” Boggess said. “And next to Texada (corner of Wall and Washington streets), this house in 1807 was second in value on the tax rolls.”

Furthermore, the house gains importance from its earliest occupants, Boggess said. Well-to-do merchant and planter James Moore built the house sometime between 1797 and 1801.

It was during Moore’s ownership that the famous 1797 raising of the American flag by Andrew Ellicott took place, signaling that the United States laid claim to its territory and the Spanish era was at an end. From this act, the hill and the house gain their names.

However, the subsequent owners brought further importance to the house, Boggess said. Moore and his family moved out of the house and first rented the house to Samuel Brooks.

“Brooks was President John Adams’ personal representative in this area,” Boggess said. “He worked with property claims.”

Brooks gained prominence in the area, elected the first mayor of Natchez in 1803 and later serving as the first state treasurer.

“Brooks we found was a cousin of the Adams family. One of his best-known kinsmen was Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), who wrote the words to the Christmas carol ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem,’” Boggess said.

Researchers during the renovation worked with three inventories, all of which divulged clues to the history of the house — the inventory of James Moore, builder; of Samuel Brooks, the second resident; and of Dr. Frederic Seip, who rented and then purchased the house after Brooks gave up residency there.

Seip, one of several graduates of the Medical College of Philadelphia, came to Natchez in about 1803. He lived in the house from 1807 until his death in 1819 and had his clinic there, as well.

Happily, researchers found that furnishings in the house remained appropriate. “We do not have to change a thing,” Boggess said.

The ground floor great room probably was “where Samuel Brooks and his friends met to discuss politics. That room makes great sense. We don’t have to touch it,” she said.

Still, there will be changes in the information provided tourists by the guides who work in the house. And Boggess hopes to develop a medical museum in commemoration of Seip’s ownership of the house.

“We’ll have a loose-leaf notebook for each room with extensive historical background,” Boggess said.

“And we’re developing a manual that documents what has been done to the house.”

The records will show extensive restoration that in some cases went to the bare bones of the house. They will show evidence that provides some dating of various stages of construction.

“We do know the basic floor plan, upstairs and downstairs, and the elegant federal touches, all of this has to have been in place by February 1802 when Samuel Brooks and his family moved into the house,” Boggess said.

Interesting to club members and history enthusiasts, the grant that made the recent renovations possible was awarded in 2002, two centuries after Brooks moved into the house, said Anne MacNeil, who was president of the club when the preservation committee applied for the grant.

The club was responsible for raising $35,000 to match the $150,000 provided by the state Community Heritage Preservation grant, MacNeil said. “We’re still raising funds. We’ve had some success with special events, especially the garden seminar.”

Another, the fourth annual midwinter garden seminar, will be held Jan. 26, following the theme “Gardens and Gardeners Then and Now, 1932-2007,” taking a lead from the celebration of 75 years of Natchez Pilgrimage, which began in 1932.

The restoration work has been conducted with oversight by a member of the same New Orleans-based architectural firm that took on the historic 1934-1937 restoration by the club soon after Pilgrimage began.

Though a different kind of restoration, the challenges continue, Boggess said.

“We’ve been dealing with a lot of cracks inside and out, extensive water damage inside and out,” Boggess said.

The restoration included replacing the old “make-do heating and cooling with a central unit that meets museum standards,” Boggess said.

The restoration elicited an award in April 2006 from the Mississippi Heritage Trust.

“We’re very, very pleased to receive that award,” MacNeil said. “We’d like to promote and highlight how significant this house is in Natchez. We have so much more than the white columns here.”