The Lawrence County Historical Society will host its annualHoliday Tour of Homes and Historic Places Nov. 19 from 10 a.m. to 4p.m.

The tour will highlight some of the county’s unique homes”dressed in holiday trimmings” and a few of its many registeredhistorical landmarks, said Kay Allen, an event organizer with thehistorical society.

Homes featured this year include the homes of Marvin and DaphineVining, Mac and Betty Gayle Flowers, Brant and Shanteau Tirello andthe Lawrence County Habitat for Humanity home built this year.

Tour tickets will be on sale at the Lawrence County Civic Centerand include a map of the route. The cost of the tour and lunch is$10.

The Vining home was selected for its use of elaborate moldingand trim and display of a collection of antiques, Allen said.

Patterned after the A. Hayes Town architectural designs, theFlowers home was heavily influenced by the early architecture ofthe Creole and Cajun cultures, she said.

A taste of the Victorian era is in store at the Tirello home.The house was patterned by architect Breeland Farmers afterMontaigne, an antebellum home in Natchez, Allen said.

The Habitat for Humanity home is the fifth built in LawrenceCounty.

“It just worked out that they were completing it at the time wewere planning the tour,” Allen said.

A lunch of New Orleans-style red beans and rice, included in theprice of the tour, will be served in the historic Lawrence CountyCivic Center in downtown Monticello. The civic center served asMonticello High School for several decades.

The Regional History Museum located on the bottom floor of thecivic center will be open for viewing. It depicts the rich historyof territorial Lawrence County. The museum highlights the St.Stephens Road, which connected Fort St. Stephens on the TombigbeeRiver with the territorial capitol of Natchez on the MississippiRiver.

The St. Stephens Road intersected the Pearl River at Monticelloand made the town a cultural and economic center that greatlycontributed to the early settlement of the interior counties ofMississippi.

Directly behind the museum on the banks of the Pearl River,Cooper’s Ferry Park is the historic site of a steamboat landing.The park features a scenic overlook deck, nature trails, butterflygardens and a gazebo. The park’s authentic reproduction of a millwheel reflects the role that milling sites which dotted the countryside held the history of the county.

Further down the tour trail, visitors will find regional artistsand craftsmen displaying their wares at the Governor A. H. LonginoHouse, ca. 1884, Allen said.

Longino, a Lawrence County native, was Mississippi’s 35thgovernor, serving from 1900 to 1904. During his term as governor,he began a campaign to attract new industry to the state andsupervised the design and building of a new state capitol still inuse today. He also created the Department of Archives and Historyand a new penitentiary at Parchman Farm was constructed during hisadministration.