Long, long ago, there was a time when Florida was a frightening tropical wilderness.
There were no hotels, highways, theme parks, or Hooters. In the late 1800’s, Southwest Florida didn’t have tourists or t-shirt shops – it was cow country. In fact, when the United States took possession of Florida in 1821, it was described as a “vast, untamed wilderness, plentifully stocked with wild cattle.” Early Floridians were called “crackers” due to the cracking sound their whips made when rounding up herds of cattle.
Early settlers were brave souls who withstood high temperatures (no air conditioning back then), long days in the blistering sun, mosquitoes, snakes, alligators, hungry panthers, and Indian tribes who were not very welcoming of these new folks taking over their land.
Jake Henry and his bride, Molly, a beautiful 21-year old girl with long, red curls, settled in the Arcadia back country after the Civil War in the late 1860s. The couple traveled down from Alabama to try and strike it rich in the cow business. It wasn’t easy, but Jake was determined and Molly did her best to make a cozy home for the couple. She learned to fish and experimented with gardening around their tiny shack. Since Jake would join other cattlemen in riding to central Florida to gather cows, Molly learned how to use a rifle to protect herself and their homestead in the long weeks that Jake was gone. After a few years, Jake and Molly welcomed a baby daughter, Elizabeth. The couple was happy, but Jake still had to work hard — and sadly, leave Molly and Elizabeth for weeks at a time. Molly was good with a rifle, and she was smart, but one thing she couldn’t protect herself and Elizabeth from was disease.
In August of 1870, when Jake was near Lake Okeechobee rustling cows, Molly contracted smallpox and without a doctor nearby, it took her quickly. When neighbors Daniel and Virginia Summerlin went to check on Molly, they found her laying in bed with one-month old Elizabeth silent and unmoving in her arms.
Devastated, they buried mother and daughter together in a modest pine box in the local cemetery not far from the Henry shack and then they sent word to Jake.
Jake returned to the shack and locked himself in. He refused to see any of the townspeople and grieved in private.
A day after Molly and Elizabeth’s burial, Daniel and Virginia were picking berries when they saw woman with long red curls slip through the forest. They couldn’t see her face, but they were shocked at how much the woman looked like Molly. Convinced they were seeing things, they continued on.
The next day, Virginia was outside her shack washing clothes in a nearby creek, when she saw the red-haired woman again seem to glide past. Virginia watched as the woman disappeared down a hill. “It must be that this heat is making me see things,” she told Daniel that night.
On the following day, the couple were tending to their chicken coop, when the lady with the long red curls appeared near a tree on their property. This time, they could see her face and it was clearly their dead friend, Molly — and her eyes seemed to be pleading with them to follow her. As frightened as Daniel and Virginia were, they hurried after the gliding specter. Molly led them through the wilderness to the local cemetery and directly to her and Elizabeth’s still freshly dug grave.
Then, before the Summerlins’ eyes, the beautiful ghost vanished.
Daniel was never sure what compelled him, even as he told the story to his grandchildren in years to come, but he commanded Virginia to go to Jake’s shack and to bring him to the graveyard with a shovel. Virginia obeyed without question.
When Jake answered the door, he was bleary-eyed and pale – he hadn’t slept in days as he mourned his wife and his baby daughter. He was so addled that he didn’t even question Virginia when she told him to follow her with a shovel.
When Virginia and Jake arrived at the graveyard, Daniel was already digging at the dirt frantically with his hands. “I don’t know why,” he yelled, “but we must dig up the grave!”
Jake started shoveling quickly and with a strength he didn’t know he had until his shovel hit the box. He and Daniel pried open the coffin and saw Molly’s angelic face and alabaster skin, Elizabeth swaddled in a blanket next to her.
Jake drew his breath in as tears welled in his eyes.
Suddenly, there was the faintest whimper. And then Jake, Daniel, and Virginia stared in shock as baby Elizabeth opened her eyes.
She was alive. Barely – but alive. Jake scooped the infant from the coffin and the three ran to the shack of a local Seminole medicine woman. The Indian doctor examined the baby and declared that she had likely been in a disease-induced coma that looks very much like death. The coma allowed her tiny body to fight the disease and she was now healed.
Jake broke down with joy and took little Elizabeth home where she grew up healthy and beautiful, with long red curls.
No one in Arcadia ever saw the ghostly red-haired lady again, for she had done what she set out to do – and that was to save her baby – even if it was from beyond.
By Stephanie Davis, Home-Tech Blogger