09/04/2026
Towering over the landscape on one of Cedar Hill’s highest points stands the tombstone for Antonio Genella.
Born in Dalpe, Switzerland in 1819, he would eventually become a prominent merchant in Vicksburg with a net worth of almost $6 million dollars in today’s terms. Although distinguished in his day, very little information remains of his life and business ventures apart from him marketing himself as a china and glass merchant in 1860. Judging by his elaborate tombstone, we can safely say he was very successful in his professional trade. Coincidentally, his burial plot with its perch over the surrounding area proved to be a fitting location for a man whose house once stood on what was one of the highest hills in town, Sky Parlor Hill.
Described in both Mary Loughborough’s and Emma Balfour’s respective diaries, “My Cave Life in Vicksburg” and “Vicksburg, A City Under Siege.” Mary details a hill so tall that enemy cannon could never sufficiently elevate to a level that could, “throw shell and shot so high as Sky Parlor Hill.”
Excerpt from “My Cave Life in Vicksburg”
"The Sky Parlor Hill is so called from its extreme height, being a portion of the bluff that stood where the principal commercial street now stands, the grading of the city having taken most of the elevation down. The hill now occupies about a square—the distance of two squares from the river—and is a prominent feature from all parts of the city. A rugged drive winds on one side up the steep ascent, and a long and dizzy flight of wooden steps ascend from the street on the opposite side. It is surmounted by a little house that one could imagine surmounted “the bean stalk” in the celebrated history of “Jack,” quaint and old, yet one that the earlier inhabitants would have called a “fine house.” The view—and that is what the place is visited for—is good, both of the city and river, for some miles above. Crowds of people collect here on the occasion of any move being made in the direction of the river."
Though both Antonio and Sky Parlor Hill would survive the horrors of war, as the sounds of musketry and cannon ceased to reverberate throughout the hills, so too would they be lost to the pages of history. Antonio Genella passed away in 1871 and Sky Parlor Hill was razed in 1894 to construct a new Post Office and Customs House that now serves as the headquarters for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Mississippi River Commission and Mississippi Valley Division.
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