| Refuge Plantation is significant as an example of a mid-nineteenth-century plantation house in Washington County exhibiting strong influences from the emerging formal Greek Revival style, and as the 19th-century home of Francis Griffin and his son, John Griffin, influential Washington Co. residents. Within a few years of establishing Refuge Plantation, Griffin constructed a plantation house. Protected by the plantation's levee system and shaded by oak tress, the plantation house was constructed within view of the Mississippi River. Preceding the construction of "Belmont" and "Mount Holly," two of Washington County's high-style plantation houses, both constructed in the 1850s, Refuge Plantation was clearly built as the nucleus of a working plantation. In form, the house can be described as an enlarged cottage structure employing Greek Revival detailing, massing, and construction methods interpreted in a simple, vernacular mode, perhaps as a result of the rather early date for this style in the region. The house was listed on the National Register on 5 April 1984. It is included in "The Majesty of the Mississippi Delta" (2002) (p. 53). |