Infamous 'Lady In Red' Grave Has Tourists Flocking From All Over To View It
Normally, the thought of visiting a coffin of some random person you've never met would sound like a morbid activity best left for more curiously macabre minds. However, there's actually one gravesite in Mississippi that sees droves of tourists every year. All they want is a peek at the dead woman's face.
Odd fellows cemetery
Odd Fellows Cemetery, like most cemeteries in the country, was visited primarily by families who had deceased members residing on the grounds. However, when people found out the "Lady in Red" was relocated there, fascinated tourists poured in to take part in the mysterious phenomenon.
"Talk of the town"
"I remember when they found her and people were talking about it," said Chris Hammett, a resident of Lexington, Mississippi. "It was the talk of the town. It's just a mystery; who she is and where she came from." That's because her original resting place wasn't Odd Fellows.
The flowing Yazoo
The Yazoo River flows through both Louisiana and Mississippi, and many consider it to mark the southern boundary of the Mississippi Delta. While the river is known for its intense waterflow and scenic paddleboat rides, one construction crew discovered something that it certainly wasn't known for.
The backhoe discovery
In 1969, a crew of workmen were making their way down the bank of the Yazoo River with a massive backhoe. Their goal was to dig up a new septic tank line for residents who lived in the area. Everything was going according to plan when suddenly the backhoe struck something unexpected.
Coffin with a question
Once the crew cleared the backhoe out of the area, they could see what its rock bucket hit while it digging. It was a coffin! Everyone looked at each other puzzled. This wasn't anywhere close to a cemetery. And, the actual coffin itself was unlike anything the men had seen before, either.
Fish iron casket
It was called a Fish Iron Casket, which was specially designed to keep bodies preserved for long periods of time to prevent decomposition. Popular in the mid-1800s, these products were superior to wooden coffins because the corpses could travel long distances without erosion, and they also had a nifty little window in case of disease.
Peek-a-boo!
No one would dare open up a casket if they knew the body inside was potentially riddled with an airborne illness, so there was a glass window by the head that allowed for friends and family to view the body safely. But, there was one other detail about this particular coffin that truly allowed for the impeccable condition of the woman's body.
Preserved in alcohol
The body was completely preserved in alcohol! According to some of the people who found her in 1969, even though she had been dead for decades, she looked exactly as though she could have died the day before. She also had some very striking stand-out features.
The news breaks
Writer Jane Biggers spoke of the discovery just days after it happened: "The unidentified woman was discovered a few days ago in a metal, glass-lined casket in a garden plot on Egypt Plantation and near the home occupied by the J. T. Thomas family." It seemed like everyone who saw the body couldn't help but stare in amazement.
"Someone's pain and grief"
"Something has been pulling me to her," Chris Hammett continued. "She was someone's child, sister — someone's pain and grief. She has no one to speak for her. She has no one to pray over her. She has no one to put flowers on her grave. I don't want her to ever be forgotten again." The woman was just so alluring.
"She was real pretty"
For one, she had long jet-black hair, a red velvet dress, a cape, and buckled shoes; she was dressed quite well for someone about to find themselves six feet underground. And, according to one cemetery worker named Walter Pitchford, she was quite the looker. "She was real pretty," he said. "Her hair was black looking and long. She was a young lady."
Looking for clues
Biggers continued, "Persons viewing the woman, who has been described as in her twenties or thirties, dressed in red velvet, with long brown hair, estimate she has been dead at least 75 years." Although no one knew who she was, historians have found clues that narrow things down a bit.
Deserving of a re-bury
Using clues based on the clothing and Fish Iron Casket, it's likely she died prior to the Civil War. This fact alone means the preservation job from both the alcohol and specialized coffin was even more impressive! Not long after the "Lady in Red" was found, she was reburied in a cemetery in Starkville, Mississippi.
Theories abound
One plausible theory is that the Fish Iron Casket was one of several being transported along the bank of the river, and perhaps rocky terrain caused it to slip off without the driver knowing. There are also people who believe it may have been an actual accident on the river that claimed her life.
A drowning victim?
Paddleboat tours up and down the Yazoo River were especially popular decades ago, and she could very well have been a passenger who fell overboard and drowned. This, of course, didn't explain the coffin or the pristine condition of her body. So, even though theories existed, no one could pinpoint anything exact.
"People came from all over"
"People came from all over," cemetery worker Pitchford said. "They wanted to know where the Lady in Red was and I'd stop mowing and show them the Lady in Red. Finally, it all died off and they stopped coming." But then the cemetery was handed over to another groundskeeper.
A quest for more information
In 2018, the grounds keeping responsibilities of the cemetery were handed off to the Lexington Odd Fellows Endowment, and a woman named Cam Bonelli is now actively trying to dig up more information on the elusive Victorian-era Lady in Red. It's a mystery too juicy to ever completely forget about.
The mystery remains
Will anyone ever discover the true identity of the infamous "Lady in Red"? It's hard to say, but the fact that she spent so many years underground without so much as a blemish on her skin is more than remarkable. However, another unidentified body with an unusual casket buried in Queens, New York sent experts down a similar wormhole, after construction workers accidentally struck the exterior
Beneath metal sheets
Where they expected soft dirt and rocks, they found oddly clumped sheets of metal. Shifting one large sheet aside, they noticed the shape of something underneath that turned their stomachs. Certain that they weren't dealing more than an old rusty pipe, the construction workers quickly called the cops to report their accidental discovery, and the detectives who arrived grimly confirmed the truth.
Human remains
Detectives Warren and Saez were sure: it was a human body. They'd handled their fair share of grisly crime scenes, but they'd never witnessed something quite like this. There was more going on than met the eye.
Didn't seem like foul play
See, further inspection proved this wasn't a crime scene. Where there should've been dust and bones, lay a startlingly well-preserved female corpse, carefully dressed in clothing from at least a century in the past.
Called in forensics
Staring down at the mummified body — and with no idea what to do with it — the officers' next call was to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, forensics division. Scott Warnasch was their guy.
Recognized the metal fragments
Scott wasn't in the habit of fielding calls from the homicide department. At the word mummy, he called in some colleagues. The second he saw the metal fragments his pulse quickened, "Right away I knew what they were."
Morbid artifact
Luckily, Scott nursed a passion for the old, strange, and sometimes morbid. He recognized the metal scraps as a rare find, curiously located in the soil of Elmhurst, Queens — the remnants of an iron coffin.
Investigating the identity
Armed with the info this person was buried in an iron coffin, Scott could pinpoint that the body had been laid to rest around 150 years previously. Wheels started turning in his mind over the identity of the woman given the unique, costly casket.
What they observed
From what they could visibly observe, the deceased wore a nightgown and a muslin veil. Her hair was braided with a black horn comb placed carefully into the plaits. She was African American, and they noticed something unusual peppered her skin.
Skin markings
Forensic scientists know to shield bodies from weather exposure to buy themselves time from the ticking clock of decomposition. But in this case, odd markings on the skin caused them to ignore the rulebook entirely.
Contagious disease
A sequence of dotted marks traced the skull, which hinted towards a contagious affliction — smallpox. Given the level of preservation, the forensic team felt obligated to inform the Center for Disease Control.
CDC stepped in
Retreating until the scene was contagion free, the CDC researchers took over. They assessed the scene and immediately agreed it had potential to spread.
500 million deaths
Smallpox took more lives across the globe than any other disease. In the 20th century alone, the illness claimed between 300 and 500 million deaths. In the 19th century, New York was a hotbed for infection.
Cause of death
The timeline from Scott's estimate of the 150-year-old iron coffin overlapped with the smallpox outbreaks, which suggested this poor girl was one of the many New Yorkers ravaged by the disease.
Pinpointing her identity
Thankfully, samples sent to the lab revealed that the disease was no longer viable. With the fear of contagion squashed, they dove into unraveling the mysterious identity of the girl in the iron coffin.
Piecing together the puzzle
As far as the law goes, the case was closed. But Scott wasn't ready to say goodbye to the mystery girl. Luckily, he had some scientific connections to help him piece together the puzzle.
3D rendering
Jerry Conlogue retired professor, mummy x-ray technician scanned the remains to compile a virtual 3D rendering. The bones gave another critical point in the right direction to find out who she was.
Determined her age
It turned out smallpox had indeed cut her life short. They estimated from her fully fused bones that she died between ages 25-35. Lesions, a telltale sign of the progressed infection, reached all the way into her brain cavity.
Iron coffins weren't cheap
You might be guessing that an iron coffin could be the act of desperate survivors looking to ward off smallpox contamination. Nope, this funerary device was reserved for those willing to pay the high price tag.
Prominent users
To take your eternal slumber in one of those unique caskets, you had to be someone important. For instance, it was the choice of former First Lady Dolley Madison.
The issue of transportation
Back then, it was the only way to attempt transporting a body after death; otherwise, you were buried not far from where you took your last breath.
The creator
In fact, Almond Dunbar Fisk created them after his brother died several states from home. Soon, he patented the technology, but it never became a true mainstay.
Why an iron coffin?
So, how was this girl buried in this hard-to-come-by vessel? Their next course of action was to examine a body part that offers a mouthful of details — her teeth.
Dental clues
High levels of lead in her teeth revealed her location as an urban setting, a common consequence of the industrialization of the early 1800s. Armed with that info, they turned to public records to track her down.
Queens split in two
Queens in 1850 was split into two towns, Flushing and Newtown. The burial site for Jane Doe was the latter, along the only street in town, Dutch Lane, next to the former site of a prominent Black church.
First African American census
The Black community in Newtown was growing in the 1850s. That year marked the first census recording African Americans, despite denying them the right to vote. Researchers were hopeful that their girl would be named on the list.
Settling on one name
From the list, they narrowed it down to 33 names. Some mild digging into the persons listed left researchers wholly convinced that one particular individual was the girl in the iron coffin, a 26-year-old named Martha Peterson.
Connection to iron coffins
New York in 1850 was still transitioning from slave to free state, but Martha Peterson was free. Records indicated she lived in the home of a person with a direct connection to the ominous-looking iron coffins.
Where she lived
The census placed Martha as a resident of the home of William Raymond, who just so happened to be the brother-in-law and business partner of one Almond "iron coffin creator" Fisk.
The Newton community
In their mission to solve the case of missing identity, they'd learned about the pious close-knit African American community to which Martha had belonged.
Passed over and forgotten
She represented a group of people passed over and forgotten, in a time when bookkeeping and stories of the average black person were obscured.
Proper burial
Everyone agreed Martha deserved a proper burial, and they knew a church that would be glad to welcome her home. Since 1850, the church that Martha was buried beside moved, but not too far.
The church
They contacted Saint Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church and filled them in on their late congregant's fascinating history.
Honoring her memory
Thrilled to have a window into their past, the church found Martha's story was significant. Officials provided a mahogany coffin and held a funeral to honor her memory.
Paying respects
Pastor Kimberly L. Detherage explained, "It was important for us to make sure that we treated her with the very utmost respect. But most of all, we paid homage to the person that we believed that she was."
Putting a face to her story
One last curiosity kept the researchers from fully letting Martha go. She felt like a friend at that point, so they wanted to put a face to her incredible story and share it with her community.
Facial reconstruction
Taking scans of her skull, they used reconstruction software from forensic specialists to see what she would have looked like in life.
The face of Martha Peterson
After digitally reconstructing her bones, muscles, and features, they were left looking at the face of Martha Peterson. Her visual image is an important reminder that she wasn't just a name on the registry; she was living person in a world not so far in the past.
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