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At the entrance to Boston Harbor is
George's Island. Fort Warren was built on George's Island in the 1840s, and
completed in 1850. The granite fort is pentagonal in shape, and was
constructed with facilities such as barracks, ammunition magazine, store
houses, hospital, kitchen, mess rooms, jail cells, and a battery of heavy
guns that faced the sea.
During the Civil War, Fort Warren
was used as prison for Confederate soldiers and dis-loyal citizens.
Alexander Hamilton Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of
America, was the most famous person imprisoned at the fort. The island was
an inhospitable place, and Confederate soldiers found the cold weather
unbearable in comparison to their southern homesteads. During winter, Union
soldiers had purportedly seen mysterious shadows when patrolling the lonely
beaches of the island, and such occurrences are likely what led to the
modern ghost story.
The Lady in Black is supposedly an
apparition on George's Island; a young woman in black robes that wanders
about the grounds. She is Mrs. Andrew Lanier, wife of a Confederate soldier
that was imprisoned there in 1861. Edward Rowe Snow, a 20th century local
historian, is most likely the initial source of The Lady In Black myth, and
the following is a description of the story:
Mrs. Lanier received a letter from
her husband that he had been imprisoned at Fort Warren. She was compelled to
free him, making an epic journey from Georgia to Hull Massachusetts and the
home of a Confederate sympathizer. Hull is only about a mile away from
George's Island. Mrs. Lanier systematically observed the fort with a
spy-glass, and on a stormy night in January 1862, had rowed across to
George's Island and went ashore. She cut her hair short and dressed as a
man, and brought with her an old pistol and small pick-axe.
She made her way to the dungeon
cells, and from outside the fort signaled to her husband by whistling an
obscure southern tune, to which he signaled back. Mrs. Lanier was able to
squeeze through the slit-window of the cell, and was then hidden by the
Confederate soldiers.
With the use of the pick-axe, the
soldiers contrived to tunnel to the center of the fort, and then overtake
the guards and obtain weapons. The tunnel took several weeks to dig, and on
the eve of finishing the tunnel, a sharp blow of the pick had alerted a
guard. The alarm was sounded, and the tunnel quickly discovered. As each of
the Confederate soldiers was removed from the tunnel, a tally was taken.
When all the prisoners were accounted for, Mrs. Lanier was to spring from
the tunnel and capture a Union officer with the old pistol.
Mrs. Lanier succeeded in surprising
the officer, but he slapped the pistol from her hand. The pistol went off
and the bullet struck and killed her husband. As punishment for her deeds,
Mrs. Lanier was condemned to death by hanging. Her final request was to be
given female clothing, and a search of the fort produced nothing but some
old black robes. She was executed in these robes and buried on George's
Island.
According to King's Handbook of
Boston Harbor by M.F. Sweetser (1883), the only notable prison escapes
occurred after 1862. In 1863, a daring escape was made by six Confederate
soldiers. They squeezed through slit-holes in the granite walls and made
their way to the beach. Two of the soldiers attempted to swim to Lovell's
Island, but the tide was going out and they were swept out to sea. A second
notable escape was of two soldiers that constructed a crude raft and did
make it to Lovell's. From there they obtained a small boat, and sailed out
of the harbor. The pair were later re-captured by a coast guard cutter.
Early stories of ghosts on George's
Island do not exist, but Sweetser states the following about Civil War era
folklore, "The sentry-posts were often made untenable by the dashing of the
waves, and the guards had to be replaced by patrols. No wonder that the
unfortunate sentinels saw mysterious shapes, so that an order was posted at
the guard-house, 'denouncing severe punishment in any case where ghosts were
allowed to pass a beat without challenge and arrest.' |
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