The blood of the lamb–Gloucester, Virginia

Are you washed in the blood,
In the soul-cleansing blood of the lamb?
Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?

— “Are Your Washed in the Blood?” by Elisha Hoffman (1878)

Church Hill (private)
John Clayton Memorial Highway (VA 14)
Gloucester Courthouse, Virginia

Along the banks of the Ware River, Mordecai Cooke established his plantation in 1658, calling it Mordecai’s Mount. Towards the end of the 17th century, Cooke’s son donated a small parcel of land to the local parish to construct a church and thus Ware Episcopal Church was built a short distance away from the home. The house on a hill above the church soon earned the name, Church Hill.

With the marriage of a Cooke daughter, the estate passed into the hands of the Throckmorton family. The home may have been rebuilt several times before the current frame structure was built in the 19th century. While the house may have changed, a legend has persisted involving one of the young Throckmorton daughters.

Young Elizabeth Throckmorton traveled to London with her father at a young age. The impressionable girl soon found herself in the thrall of a young English gentleman. After her return home, she continued corresponding with him, despite her father’s objections. Thinking that the young man might only be interested in his fortune, Elizabeth’s father began quietly intercepting the letters.

Distressed by the sudden end to the love letters from across the pond, Elizabeth fell into a depression. As she pined for her English gentleman, her health deteriorated. As the first cold winds of winter blew in November of that year, Elizabeth fell into an eternal sleep. Her family dutifully washed and cleaned her body in a light gown and placed her into a simple coffin barefoot. A grave was dug on the edge of the garden and the coffin lowered after a simple service likely led by the rector of Ware Church.

Ware Parish Church Gloucester Virginia
Ware Church, taken for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Following the burial of their beloved daughter, the family retired to their home to bundle up as the first storm of winter blew in. However, local grave robbers had their sights set on the fresh grave and the young lady who may have been buried with family jewels. In the dead of night, they stole into the small family burying ground to disinter its newest resident.

Once the pine coffin was pulled out the ground, the lid was pried off and the body of the young lady was exposed. Her earrings and necklace were easy to remove, though her ring was steadfastly held on her swollen finger. The thieves turned to using a knife to cut the ring off. After several strokes, the thieves were surprised when the body seemed to jerk to life, coughing and sputtering and crying out in pain. The frightened thieves fled the bloody scene.

Front door of Ware Church Gloucester Virginia
Front door of Ware Church, 2016. Photo by Voxinterior, courtesy of Wikipedia.

In confusion and pain, Elizabeth rose from her coffin and blindly began to make her way towards the house. The freezing wind blew, and her light gown gave no protection from the cold. Her feet were frozen by the newly fallen snow in her path as she unsteadily crawled towards the dark hulk of her family’s home.

As the family’s enslaved people woke in the dark of the morning a lump under the snow at the door was revealed as the frozen form of young Elizabeth with blood congealed around her mangled hand. Further grief-stricken by the gruesome discovery, the family reburied their daughter’s remains, though her spirit continues to walk beyond her grave.

Legend tells us that Elizabeth’s wraith continues to walk when the first snows of the season come. Within the house, inhabitants have heard the sounds of her light footsteps and preparations being made in the home’s fireplaces. Shortly the crackle of fires is heard issuing from the cold and empty chimneys. Often the next morning, drops of fresh blood are found in the snow outside leading from the cemetery up to the doorstep. Later inhabitants of the home have also reported that the empty house has been seen ablaze with light on dark and stormy nights. Perhaps trying to warm the young girl who froze to death several centuries before.

Church Hill is a private home. Please respect the privacy of its residents, both the living and the dead.

Sources

  • Church Hill.” Colonial Ghosts Blog. 15 August 2017.
  • Lee, Marguerite DuPont. Virginia Ghosts, Revised Edition. Berryville, VA: Virginia Book Company, 1966.
  • Taylor, L. B., Jr. Ghosts of Virginia’s Tidewater. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2011.

As the caisson goes limping along—Sharpsburg, MD

West Main Street
Sharpsburg, Maryland

Sharpsburg, Maryland is a small, quaint town with a haunting legacy. On the morning of September 17, 1862, fighting broke out just outside of town which developed into the bloodiest battle in American military history, the Battle of Antietam. By the end of that day, more than 22,000 men were dead, wounded or missing. The Confederate armies were packed into many of the buildings and spaces in the small village in an attempt to dislodge the Union armies massed north of town and continue with an invasion of Pennsylvania. The battle ended with the armies having held their own, though it was considered a victory for the Union. Within a few days, General Robert E. Lee’s troops were withdrawn from the wasted and pillaged village.

Much of the town remains as it was on that fateful day, including spirits of the soldiers and locals who were killed in the battle. Locals and visitors still encounter apparitions to this day. One image of the battle is repeated on West Main Street in the heart of Sharpsburg. Near the town’s primary intersection of Main and Mechanic Streets, the image of a military battery struggling with a damaged artillery caisson has been encountered.

Local tour guides, Mark and Julia Brugh describe this scene in their 2015 book, Civil War Ghosts of Sharpsburg, “one repeated sighting on Main Street in Sharpsburg, just west of the town square, is of a broken artillery caisson that is dragged by a team of horses and pushed by the remnants of a unit of men who appear fatigued and strained by the ardor of battle. The men and horses struggle to move the heavy load with smashed and broken wagon wheels up a long sloping rise as the street heads to the west. Sometimes the story is reported with a single broken-down caisson and cannon; other times there are two cannons, one of them described as severely smashed or bent at the barrel.”

Downtown Sharpsburg Maryland
Buildings on Main Street at the town square in Sharpsburg, 2012. Photo by Acroterion, courtesy of Wikipedia.

The Brughs explain this this sighting is one of the first ghost stories they learned, and they continue to hear from a variety of people who have seen this spectral scene. One witness described the men in great detail including the insignia of a palm tree on the soldiers’ uniforms. However, this seeming incongruous detail led to the Brugh’s identification of these soldiers. The palm tree was the palmetto that is emblematic of South Carolina soldiers. The state’s flag depicts a palmetto tree reminiscent of the fort built to defend Sullivan’s Island during the American Revolution, which was constructed of palmetto logs and sand and was able to repel British artillery bombardment.

During the Battle of Antietam, a South Carolina artillery battery under the command of Capt. Hugh R. Garden did not have the protection of palmetto logs as they were bombarded by Union artillery. Civil War historian Stephen W. Sears describes the scene on Cemetery Hill, on the eastern edge of the town:

“…one gun was disabled by a direct hit on the muzzle and a second knocked out when a shell smashed its carriage. Presently Garden’s ammunition ran out and the guns were hauled off the hill by hand, the horses hitched up, and the battery went clattering back through the streets of Sharpsburg under the lash of the drivers, the gun with the splintered wheels dragged along in a great dust cloud by its straining team.”

Civil War era limber and caisson
A limber and artillery caisson from “Instruction for Field Artillery” (1864) by Wm. H. French, Wm. F. Barry, and H.J. Hunt.

Long before Sharpsburg was founded, Main Street was the Great Wagon Road leading German Palatine, Swiss Protestant, and Scotch-Irish immigrants from Pennsylvania south to the Carolinas and Georgia. Sharpsburg was established here in 1763 and named for Horatio Sharpe, the Propriety Governor of the Province of Maryland. Satisfied with this sylvan farming community, some of the travelers put down roots here. The construction of the Chesapeake & Ohio (C&O) Canal nearby running parallel to the Potomac brought business to community, but it did not wake from its slumber until the Union Army began to rain artillery on that September morning.

With its innocence lost through the tumult of the battle, the town has retained its quiet demeanor as well as energy from that time that is spontaneously revived in the streets.

Sources

  • Brugh, Mark P. & Julia Stinson Brugh. Civil War Ghosts of Sharpsburg. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2015.
  • Great Wagon Road. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed 2 September 2023.
  • Sears, Stephen W. Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam. NYC: Houghton Mifflin, 1983.
  • Sharpsburg, Maryland. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed 2 September 2023.