"The John Ford House is a very significant building with important territorial period associations. According to Goodspeed's, John Ford and his three brothers came to Marion County in 1809 and were among the county's earliest settlers (Vol I, pp. 751-52). Claiborne described John Ford as a 'South Carolinian, who early settled in Pearl River--a farmer and a man of fine sense and unimpeachable integrity--of patriarchical influence--who has left numerous descendants who inherit his characteristics' (p. 355). Stylistic and documentary evidence indicates that the John Ford House was built about 1810.

"In 1816, the Pear River Convention, which met to discuss the division of the Mississippi Territory, was held at John Ford's house on the Pearl River ('Journal of a Convention of the Delegates of several Counties of the Mississippi Territory, begun and held at John Ford's on Pearl River, on Tuesday the 29th day of Oct, 1816,' TERRITORIAL PAPERS, VI, o, 708-717.) John Ford was a delegate to the State Constitutional Convention and signed the Constitution of 1817 (Claiborne, pp. 352-555). Family tradition has maintained that one room of the house functioned as a post office during the territorial period, and this claim is substantiated in the TERRITORIAL PAPERS, where John Ford is recorded as postmaster in 1815. Ford died in 1826, but his descendants retained ownership of the house until it was sold to the Marion County Historical Society in 1962.

"The house's outstanding integrity makes it an extremely important document for studying the life of early settlers during the territorial period. With the majority of the state's territorial period resources located near Natchez, the John Ford House's location in Marion County increases its importance, because it provides a rare interpretation of the life of an early settler living far from the sophisticated society of Natchez. That the house was used for territorial period meeting and was an overnight stop for Andrew Jackson indicates that, plain though it may seem in comparison to Auburn, its near contemporary in Natchez, it was apparently much grander than the other houses in that area of the state."

The John Ford House was listed on the National Register on 21 June 1971. It was stabilized using a $12,500 HPF grant awarded in 1976. The house was designated a Mississippi Landmark on 1 November 1995 at the request of the Marion County Historical Society, owners of the property.

It is included in "Shrines to Yesterday" (1968) (p.46), "Historic Architecture in Mississippi" (1973) (pp. 85-86), "Old Homes of Mississippi, Volume I: Natchez and the South" (1977, 1979) (pp. 121-123), and "Buildings of Mississippi" (2020) (pp.327-328, PW46). [HABS: MS-11 (1936)]