The Myrtles Plantation by Frances Kermeen

Author:Frances Kermeen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Hachette Book Group USA
Published: 2008-01-29T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 29

One thing that had bothered me about Sarah was that she was seen in the suite upstairs, which didn’t exist when she lived at the Myrtles. Not only had Hamp communicated with Sarah in that room, but John L. had told me when he took me up to the suite my very first night that Sarah had died in that very room. How could she have died in that room if that wing wasn’t added until more than ten years after her death?

The house tour script, based on extensive research required to place the Myrtles on the National Register of Historic Homes, stated that the original house was typical of its day, with four rooms downstairs, four rooms up, with the steep original staircase leading up the center of the home. It wasn’t until the Stirlings bought the home well after Sarah’s death that they extended the house and the suite was built.

Then it dawned on me—could there be two Sarahs? Was it possible that the Stirlings had a daughter named Sarah, too?

There was one place to find out quickly—the cemetery at Grace Episcopal Church. I grabbed my car keys and headed to the cemetery. Extending way behind the church, the meticulously manicured graveyard was dotted with carved headstones and marble angels towering over smaller stark markers. History was laid out in layers, the graves closest to the church dating from the early 1800s, with more recent graves much farther from the church. Earlier tombstones were a status symbol; the bigger, more grandiose, the better. Family plots were framed with the finest French ironwork. I recognized some of the family names in the garden of graves—Bohen, Butler, Thompson—as descendants of these families still resided in St. Francisville.

It didn’t take me long to find the Stirling family plot just a few feet from the church, encompassed with intricately detailed, rusted ironwork. A huge, towering effigy nearly six feet tall presided over the plot, engraved on each of its four sides with the name, date of birth, and date of death of a family member: Ruffin Gray Stirling, Mary Catherine Stirling, his wife, and two of their children, but no Sarah. I walked around the plot reading names and dates of Stirling family members, and I found what I was seeking: Sarah M. Stirling, born July 4, 1832, died October 29, 1887. There had been two Sarahs at the Myrtles—Sarah Mathilda Bradford and Sarah M. Stirling!

It finally made sense! The first Sarah, General Bradford’s daughter, had lived in the original part of the house. She was the one who was said to have been poisoned along with her two little girls in 1824, after catching her husband, Clarke Woodruff, in bed with one of the slaves.

The second Sarah, Sarah M. Stirling, had not even been born yet. That explained why “Sarah” had been seen in the wing built by the Stirlings, and how she died in a part of the house that was not even built when the first Sarah died. No wonder this Sarah claimed that no one understood her.

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