Three historic houses with new owners and new auras join the 2006 Fall Pilgrimage tours, Sept. 30 to Oct. 14. The three &8212; The Wigwam, Gov. Holmes House and The Burn, have been open for tours in the past but are returning this fall after absences of several years from the public arena.

Glen and Bridget Green purchased The Burn on North Union Street in early 2006, jumping immediately into a bed-and-breakfast business at the house long before they had time to consider preparing for Fall Pilgrimage.

&8220;We had bed-and-breakfast guests three weeks after we bought The Burn,&8221; Bridget Green said.

Undaunted, they began immediately to paint, exterior and interior, and to furnish the house.

&8220;We&8217;re trying to take The Burn back to the way it once was, or at least as close as possible, within a short time frame,&8221; she said.

&8220;We&8217;re furnishing it in period antiques but also making it livable,&8221; Green said. &8220;We watch TV in the library and have meals in the dining room. That&8217;s why we bought it &8212; to live in I and enjoy it.&8221;

Michael and Eugenie Cates, owners of Gov. Holmes House, have the same philosophy about livability, even in a house that dates to before 1800.

&8220;We live in our house, and we want people to see the mixtures of lifestyle,&8221; Eugenie Cates said. &8220;We want people to see that we are respectful of the integrity of these homes but we also live in them with our families.&8221;

Dr. James T. Coy III, the manager of Natchez Pilgrimage Tours, sponsor of the Pilgrimage, said NPT leaders are emphasizing human interest among owners who show their homes on tours.

&8220;We&8217;ve said that you can&8217;t give the same tour for 50 years. Try to connect some stories to some of the objects you talk about in your homes,&8221; he said. &8220;If that vase doesn&8217;t have a story to go with it, find something that does.&8221;

Owners of each of the three new houses have chosen ways to make their tours a little different.

At Gov. Holmes House, Eugenie Cates and her daughter, Devereaux, 7, will wear costumes copied from a 1794 portrait of a mother and daughter hanging in the house.

The house dates to 1794 but has later interesting history. &8220;Governor Holmes bought the house and enlarged it in the 1820s,&8221; Cates said. &8220;So we&8217;ll also have ladies dressed in Regency style. Then in the courtyard we&8217;ll have someone in a typical 1840s hoopskirt.&8221;

Cates has purchased an elaborate ball gown created in the 1960s for the pageant that accompanies the annual Spring Pilgrimage. The workmanship caught her eye. &8220;We&8217;ll have that dress on display.&8221;

At The Burn, the atmosphere will be festive, Bridget Green said. &8220;We&8217;ll have period music in the ladies parlor or in the garden, depending on the weather. We think that will be a great addition to the tour.&8221;

Guides in the house will wear costumes suitable for a gala ball, she said. &8220;We&8217;ll be dressed for an evening affair.&8221;

Fall Pilgrimage, founded in 1977, is a younger sister to Spring Pilgrimage, which celebrates 75 years in 2007.

Coy said Fall Pilgrimage is exciting because most of the houses on tour are not usually open to visitors.

&8220;We have houses open all year long, mostly the club houses, such as Stanton Hall, Longwood, Magnolia Hall, Rosalie,&8221; he said. &8220;The private homes open for Pilgrimage normally are not open. Some of them have been in the same family for 150 years.&8221;

That is not the case with the three new houses coming on tour, but those three are creating excitement, he said.

&8220;There are new families in the houses, each clearly different and unique,&8221; he said.

At The Wigwam, owned by Joe and Cindy Meng, for example, &8220;there is possibly, outside Stanton Hall, the most impressive plaster molding I&8217;ve seen.&8221;

Joe Meng said the spacious house on Oak Street has other unique features, including intricate iron trim across the front. &8220;And the hand-painted ceiling in the ballroom is believed to have been painted by D.W. Ducie, the same artist who painted the interior of First Presbyterian Church.&8221;

Meng said he and his wife have renovated the house to make it livable for their large family while enjoying the historic architecture, as well.

Nineteen houses will be on the fall tour, rotating on morning and afternoon tours, three houses per tour. Longwood, the unfinished octagonal house off Lower Woodville Road, will be open daily.

&8220;Tourists demand that Longwood be open daily,&8221; Coy said. &8220;There is no other Longwood in America, and it&8217;s wonderful that it&8217;s unfinished.&8221;

Tickets are available at the Natchez Pilgrimage Tours ticket sales area at the Visitor Reception Center on South Canal Street. A three-house tour is $21 per person. Entrance to Longwood is $10 per person.

More information is available by calling Natchez Pilgrimage Tours, 601-446-6631 or toll-free, 800-647-6742.