improve as seven of eight children born to her died within their first year. Following the birth of the eighth child, Mrs. Gallows was in such an exhausted state that her husband worried she couldn’t care for the new baby boy, and the child was taken in and nursed by Mrs. Foute’s daughter. Indeed, Rosellen’s ill health must have lasted a while, for the child wasn’t returned until the age of two. He died six months later. Hope Foute wrote that Rosellen Gallows had two more pregnancies that ended in miscarriages. Afterward, Rosellen fell into deep melancholia and died of heart failure.
Lindsay touched the photocopied page from the Gallows family Bible with the tips of her fingers. The name of each child born to Rosellen Gallows was written in a neat, flowing hand. Rosellen had signed the bottom of the page. It was a sad little page and pitiful to think about Rosellen herself, sitting down and recording the birth and death of each of her children. Infant mortality was high during that time and in that place, as a cursory inspection of the old cemeteries eloquently reveals.
Josh Gallows’s health and fortunes took a downward turn after the death of his wife. Due to the onset of gout, he was unable to hunt or to run his farm successfully, even with the help of hired hands and his son, Elisha. He died in 1857 of heart failure. Elisha sold the property and moved away.
The cove community was almost decimated during the Civil War. Only a few of the old families still remained when Elisha Gallows returned in 1882 with a wife and two children. He bought back a portion of his family’s original homestead and built Gallows House near his former home—the house that was now temporary accommodations for the archaeology crew.
There was a separate page in the folder on the topic of ghosts. Mary Susan Tidwell reported that her great-great-stepgrandmother, Rosellen Gallows, had reported several instances of seeing apparitions in the woods and hearing voices.
No mystery there , thought Lindsay. Between probable postpartum depression and the trauma produced by the loss of her children, the poor woman’s already fragile mental state was primed for hallucinations. The apparition was likely the white tail of a deer, or perhaps a hunter, or simply her own grief manifested in some ethereal shape.
Hope Foute, the doctor’s wife, reported seeing a woman in white fleeing through the woods when she was a child. Rather clichéd , thought Lindsay. Mary Susan Tidwell herself said she saw something white on the stairs on several occasions as a little girl while visiting her grandmother in the house built by Elisha Gallows. Miss Tidwell was related to the Gallowses. Interesting.
Many of the area’s older residents were quoted in the report as saying that Knave’s Seat Cove had a reputation as a bad place. Some said the gate to hell was in the cove, though no particular incident was cited that might have been responsible for attracting malevolence, and the area had no more murders or premature deaths than any other place. One informant told a sketchy story of a young girl drowning herself in one of the cove’s ponds, her body never found. A woman from the historical society writing an article for the local paper one Halloween blamed the manifestations on Rosellen, not so much because she lost so many babies, but because the last one had lived for two years with another family and then died when returned to Rosellen’s care. She suggested that perhaps Rosellen couldn’t leave the earth because of a guilty conscience.
Lindsay wondered why the writer of the article hadn’t mentioned the ghosts seen by Hope Foute or Rosellen Gallows herself. It didn’t escape Lindsay’s notice, either, that the only people to have seen the ghosts were children and a woman of questionable mental stability. Mary Susan Tidwell, when asked about the ghosts, said they were simply souls who had left things undone. Lindsay imagined that everyone who died must
Lindsay touched the photocopied page from the Gallows family Bible with the tips of her fingers. The name of each child born to Rosellen Gallows was written in a neat, flowing hand. Rosellen had signed the bottom of the page. It was a sad little page and pitiful to think about Rosellen herself, sitting down and recording the birth and death of each of her children. Infant mortality was high during that time and in that place, as a cursory inspection of the old cemeteries eloquently reveals.
Josh Gallows’s health and fortunes took a downward turn after the death of his wife. Due to the onset of gout, he was unable to hunt or to run his farm successfully, even with the help of hired hands and his son, Elisha. He died in 1857 of heart failure. Elisha sold the property and moved away.
The cove community was almost decimated during the Civil War. Only a few of the old families still remained when Elisha Gallows returned in 1882 with a wife and two children. He bought back a portion of his family’s original homestead and built Gallows House near his former home—the house that was now temporary accommodations for the archaeology crew.
There was a separate page in the folder on the topic of ghosts. Mary Susan Tidwell reported that her great-great-stepgrandmother, Rosellen Gallows, had reported several instances of seeing apparitions in the woods and hearing voices.
No mystery there , thought Lindsay. Between probable postpartum depression and the trauma produced by the loss of her children, the poor woman’s already fragile mental state was primed for hallucinations. The apparition was likely the white tail of a deer, or perhaps a hunter, or simply her own grief manifested in some ethereal shape.
Hope Foute, the doctor’s wife, reported seeing a woman in white fleeing through the woods when she was a child. Rather clichéd , thought Lindsay. Mary Susan Tidwell herself said she saw something white on the stairs on several occasions as a little girl while visiting her grandmother in the house built by Elisha Gallows. Miss Tidwell was related to the Gallowses. Interesting.
Many of the area’s older residents were quoted in the report as saying that Knave’s Seat Cove had a reputation as a bad place. Some said the gate to hell was in the cove, though no particular incident was cited that might have been responsible for attracting malevolence, and the area had no more murders or premature deaths than any other place. One informant told a sketchy story of a young girl drowning herself in one of the cove’s ponds, her body never found. A woman from the historical society writing an article for the local paper one Halloween blamed the manifestations on Rosellen, not so much because she lost so many babies, but because the last one had lived for two years with another family and then died when returned to Rosellen’s care. She suggested that perhaps Rosellen couldn’t leave the earth because of a guilty conscience.
Lindsay wondered why the writer of the article hadn’t mentioned the ghosts seen by Hope Foute or Rosellen Gallows herself. It didn’t escape Lindsay’s notice, either, that the only people to have seen the ghosts were children and a woman of questionable mental stability. Mary Susan Tidwell, when asked about the ghosts, said they were simply souls who had left things undone. Lindsay imagined that everyone who died must
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