Ghosts of Virginia's Tidewater by L.B. Taylor Jr

Author:L.B. Taylor Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2013-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

THE REVENGE OF “DOLLY MAMMY”

There is a striking similarity between the infamous Bell Witch of Tennessee and the ghost of “Dolly Mammy” Messick, who surfaced several decades later in the town of Poquoson, Virginia. The Bell Witch allegedly returned from death to taunt a family who had cheated her in life. A specific target was a teenage girl named Betsy Bell.

Poquoson is located on a plat of land between Seaford and Yorktown to the north and west and just above Hampton to the south and east. It derives its colorful name from the Algonquin Indian word pocosin, which means a swamp or dismal place. It is nearly surrounded by water and is adjacent to the Plum Tree National Wildlife Refuge. Since colonial times, Poquoson has been the home of rugged and closely knit clans of watermen and farmers. Many current families can date their ancestors in the area back hundreds of years.

For generations, area residents owning cattle let their animals roam freely in lush, marshy regions known locally as “the Commons.” Such was the case with “Dolly Mammy” Messick, a no-nonsense, hardworking and well-liked woman whose tragic story and haunting reappearances have been remembered and recounted from generation to generation.

There is some confusion as to when she died. Some believe it was in the 1850s. And yet, according to Bill Forrest, a local resident who says that Dolly was his great-great-aunt, there is a mention in the Poquoson Waterman book, an unofficial genealogical guide, that states that she passed away in 1904 at age forty-two.

Whatever the case, it is agreed that it was a cold, blustery day laden with dark, heavy clouds hovering over the lowlands. Fearing a storm, Dolly decided to go out into the marshlands to bring in her cows and asked her teenage daughters, Minnie and Lettie Jane, to help her. Ensconced comfortably before a fire in the farmhouse, the girls sassed their mother and steadfastly refused.

Angrily flinging on a cloak, Dolly turned to her daughters and warned that if anything happened to her she would return to “hant” them for the rest of their lives. With that, she disappeared into the gloom. When she had not come back by dark, a search party of friends and neighbors was hastily organized, and they tramped through the swamps with lanterns, calling her name, but they found nothing.

The next morning, a lone fisherman, easing his boat up Bell’s Oyster Gut, a narrow estuary near the Messick home, was startled at the sight of a bare human leg sticking up out of the marsh grasses. He went for help, and soon the body of Dolly Mammy was recovered. She apparently had been sucked into a pocket of quicksand. It appeared that she had desperately struggled for her life, because the rushes and grasses around her body had been pulled up. Her funeral was well attended.

Not long after that, the haunting threat of Dolly Mammy began to be carried out. One day, her daughters went to visit nearby relations. No sooner had they arrived when ghostly knockings began to echo loudly throughout the house.

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