The Legend of Black Aggie
Monday April 21, 2008 8:37 AM
She's not a mournful dark specter, but she once brooded over a cemetery and inspired strange tales of weird events. Black Aggie is a legend in ghost lore, and tied to one of the early presidents of the United States.
The story of Black Aggie originated with the suicide death of Marian Adams, the wife of Henry Adams, the grandson of President John Quincy Adams. Depressed over the death of her father, Marian drank a fatal dose of potassium in 1885. She was buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Her grieving husband commissioned the famous sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, to create a piece for her gravesite.
Saint-Gaudens labored for four years to carve a sad-looking seated woman out of pink granite. The marker, named Grief, was placed on Marian's grave. A lot of people found the work impressive, including a sculptor who made an illegal copy of it and sold it to a prominent Baltimore family for their family burial site. Felix Angus published a major newspaper in Baltimore, and the family burial site was located in Druid Ridge Cemetery in Pikesville.
When Angus and his wife died in 1922 and 1925, they were buried there with the copy of Grief. It soon became known as Black Aggie, because bizarre things were reported to go on around the graves.
Supposedly Black Aggie got down off her seat and walked around at night. Grass would not grow there, and pregnant women who crossed her shadow would miscarry. It was said that anyone who caught the statue's glowing eyes at night would be struck blind.
Soon fraternities were holding hazings at the cemetery, daring pledges to spend the night in the embrace of Black Aggie. Stories circulated that unlucky pledges were crushed to death by her granite arms.
Ongoing vandalism and thrill-seeking prompted the Angus descendants to get rid of Black Aggie in 1966. The statue was donated to the Smithsonian Museum, and was eventually installed in the backyard of the historic Dolley Madison house (the wife of President James Madison) in Washington, D.C.
