Bathsheba Sherman's Vindication

Photo Credit: Kent Spottswood

Chapter Seventeen, from "Stories of the Forgotten: Infamous, Famous & Unremembered"-

"Sometimes histories about people from the past become distorted due to overactive imaginations and just the passing of time itself. Like the childhood game of “telephone,” after so many re-tellings it is hard to find where the facts of a story stop and where the fantasy begins.  Take the story of Bathsheba Sherman as one example. No one knew her name or her history besides maybe a local historian or two, prior to being mentioned in the film titled, The Conjuring. In fact, most people nationally, and globally, had never heard of her until the movie came out in 2013.

The movie was said to be based on the files of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who had visited the home of the Perron family in the 1970s. The family claimed to have been tormented by evil spirits in their home in Burrillville, Rhode Island.  Let me make this perfectly clear from the beginning, there was a real person named Bathsheba Sherman who lived in Burrillville, but she was not the person that the movie portrayed her to be. Bathsheba lived in another part of Burrillville. She neither lived nor worked on the old Arnold Estate, which was the property the Perron family purchased in 1971.

It was not until the 1970's that mysterious rumors sprang up out of thin air, ruining Bathsheba’s reputation posthumously. No one in town had ever heard of any questionable events regarding Bathsheba, but all of a sudden, stories were spreading like wildfire in this small community. Older folks who respected history became agitated by the false accusations, while the younger more superstitious ones wondered about the possibilities of this spine-chilling folklore actually being real.

In the movie, it was stated that Bathsheba Sherman was a witch who worshiped the Devil, sacrificed her baby to Satan and then hung herself from the tree in the back yard.  Accounts in the movie portray Bathsheba’s spirit allegedly terrorizing all who live in the home, also causing all the different tenants over the years to kill their own children, and allegedly possessing Carolyn Perron. This is false.

None of the so-called history that was told in the film, The Conjuring, has anything to do with the real Bathsheba Sherman or the true history of the house on Round Top Road. It is a disservice to the memory of both Bathsheba Sherman’s family and that of the Arnold family that these horrific fabrications have been spread, whether it was done purposely or not.

The facts are not hard to find with thorough research and diligent investigating by truth seekers.  The real Bathsheba Sherman was born on March 10, 1812, to parents, Ephraim Thayer and Hannah Taft. Ephraim's first wife was named Bathsheba Pain. It is safe to assume that his daughter was named after his first wife or a relative in the family, as that was quite common given that time period.  For the record, Bathsheba was not an Arnold as Andrea Perron claims in her book House of Darkness, House of Light.*  In fact, Bathsheba was born a Thayer. Another point to mention is that Bathsheba never worked on the property of the Old Arnold Estate, nor did she care for a child that died on the property.  She was never accused of being a witch, nor was there any accusations of any accidental death or murder involving either Bathsheba or any other persons or infants.

* Pages 299 & 453, Kindle Version, Volume One. 

By the age of 32, Bathsheba married Judson Sherman, and soon after the couple started a family.  Herbert Leander Sherman was the only one out of the four Sherman children to live to adulthood. Herbert’s headstone states that he was born in 1850, however the 1850 census records show him to be one year old at the time it was recorded in August of that year.

Herbert Sherman’s first marriage was to Georgianna Irons, and took place on January 7, 1872.  Not much is known about Georgianna except that her parents names were William and Mary Irons and that they were from Glocester, Rhode Island. The young couple were happily married for only three short years when tragedy struck. Georgianna passed away on February 11, 1875.  She is buried with the rest of the Sherman family at the Riverside Cemetery in Harrisville.

Her headstone epitaph reads:

"Why should we grieve for one so pure,

 Our loss to her is gain,

 Her happiness is now secure,

 Our sorrows still remain."--

Herbert married for a second time, to a Ms. Anna Jane Phair on December 4, 1880. The pair had two sons, William, born in 1881; and Fred, born in 1883. Sadly, William died in 1900, at the age of 19.

All of the Sherman’s children, including Herbert, are interred at the Cemetery in Harrisville with Bathsheba, Judson and Bathsheba’s family. None of the children died of any suspicious or questionable circumstances.

Judson Sherman passed away on October 1, 1881, at the age of 68 years. Probate records indicate that Herbert was listed as the sole heir to the family estate after his mother. The Sherman estate at the time of Judson’s death was worth a little over $15,000.00.  By January 2, 1883, Bathsheba had remarried, this time to Benjamin Greene, a farmer from Providence.  Both parties had lost their spouses in death, and it appears that more than likely the pair may have married out of necessity, as many did in those days.

Bathsheba eventually succumbed to old age, dying from a stroke of paralysis in her bed at home, on May 25, 1885.  Her obituary, from the Burrillville Gazette read, “Bethsheba [SIC], widow of the late Judson Sherman, died at her late residence Monday morning last, from a sudden attack of paralysis, aged 72 years. The funeral services were held on Thursday, Rev. A.H. Granger officiating, and the interment took place at Riverside Cemetery, Harrisville. She was the last member of the Thayer family, once numerous and well known in this town, her son, Herbert Sherman, being the only near relative remaining.”—

As you can see by the documented records, Bathsheba Sherman died an old woman in her bed at home. She did not hang herself as the movie would have you believe. The question now would be, “where did all these over the top stories come from?”  The answer is actually more simple than one would think. But first, let’s go over the other stories that have also gained infamy by their erroneous attachment to the old Arnold Estate on Round Top Road as well.

We have already established that Bathsheba never lived at the old Arnold Estate, nor did she work there. She did not commit suicide either, but died of old age. So where did this idea of a woman hanging herself come from? The stories that started in the 1970s also included one about a lady named Susan Arnold who allegedly hung herself in the barn on the property.  I believe that whomever started this rumor assumed, given the same last name, that Susan Arnold must have lived at the old Arnold Estate. The fact was that Susan Arnold lived in another part of town, and did not commit suicide in the house or outside in the barn, as told and retold over the years.

The Black Book of Burrillville, a macabre record of unusual deaths in town, which has been added to over the years, lists various unusual deaths ranging from murder to suicides, also listing them by category.  Although it is noted that Susan Arnold did kill herself, as I stated before, she did not live at the old Arnold Estate.  According to her obituary in the local paper, dated April 13, 1866,  it read, “Susan Arnold, wife of John, hung herself in a chamber of her residence on Sunday, April 6; aged 50 years. She was the daughter of Dexter Richardson, Esq. The circumstances were as follows: on Monday morning, she went about her household duties as usual and while Mr. Arnold (who is an invalid) was conversing with a neighbor; she went upstairs. In about ten minutes the neighbor left, and Mr. Arnold started to go upstairs, as was his custom, to try his strength. At the head of the stairs he turned to go up another flight, when he missed the key from the door of a store-room, and then he had suspicions that something was wrong.

He immediately tried the door and found it locked on the inside. He tried to push the door in, but was so weak he could not. He then went through another room and through a window into a shed-roof and into another window, and there found his wife suspended from a wardrobe hook with a very small cord.

They immediately cut her down, but the vital spark had fled. She had evidently made every preparation for the act. She had a loaded gun, a dirk knife and a phial of mercury in the room with her; and had also laid out upon a bed in another room all the clothes for her burial. It is a sad affliction to her friends. “ —-

As terrible a story as that one is, the fact of the matter is that she didn’t commit suicide at the old Arnold Estate on Round Top Road. That makes all the difference in the story. If that wasn’t bad enough, there were more stories of suicides, rumors of drownings and a few suspicious deaths that seemed to somehow become attached to the home. All untrue of course.  The next story thrown around was the suicide of Mr. John Arnold, the son of Edwin Arnold and brother to Abigail Butterworth. When Edwin Arnold died, he did not pass the old Arnold Estate to John, he passed it to his son-in law, William Butterworth, Abigail’s husband. 

Although John Arnold did commit suicide, he did not kill himself in the attic of the old Arnold Estate because he did not live there. According to the Black Book of Burrillville, John Arnold committed suicide in 1911, at his own home which was near Tarkiln.  His obituary in the Pascoag Herald mentions that he had been in poor health for several years, and “in a fit of despondency he took a dose of paris green* and the efforts of a physician to save his life was unavailing.” John Arnold was 57 years old when he died, and his funeral was held at the Universalist Church, with Rev. W. S. Turner officiating the services. He was later interred in Douglas.

*Paris Green is a highly toxic crystalline powder used as a rodenticide and insecticide.

  

We have established that neither Susan Arnold, nor John Arnold died at the old Arnold Estate, but what about Edwin Arnold?  Although he did once own the property on Round Top Road, even he died elsewhere. His obituary dated in 1903, mentioned that his body was found “beside a stone wall on the Smith Aldrich farm north of the Sherman Stock farm.”  This information was kindly provided to me by current owner of the home, Norma Sutcliffe.

 Apparently, Mr. Arnold had stopped to rest there and he “died of natural causes resulting from exposure.” He had been missing for seven weeks, before Frank Pierce had found what was left of his body.  His remains were taken to Waterman’s undertaking rooms to be prepared for his funeral and subsequent burial. With all these misrepresented stories, it seems not even one can hold up when examined thoroughly.

You might ask yourself then, if Bathsheba Sherman, Susan Arnold, John Arnold and even Edwin Arnold did not die at the Arnold Estate, did anyone?  The answer is, yes; however, those deaths were from natural causes, such as illness or old age. Remember, the farm is over 300 years old, so it would be ignorant on anyone’s part to think that house has never seen one death.

Are there any documents of deaths at the old Arnold Estate? Yes.  According to family records of remaining descendants of the Arnold family, Sally Eddy passed away at the home, as did her two children, after suffering from Typhus.  I am sure over the span of the 300 years that the farm has stood, there are other relatives who have lived and died in the home, or on the property, but none of an unusual nature. 

There was one man who died on the property who had been tied to a notorious scandal a few years before. Jarvis Smith was born in April of 1844, in the state of Rhode Island. According to the 1860 census, he was living with his mother, Elizabeth, 44; and brother, Clovis, 18, in Smithfield, Rhode Island. The United States Civil War Index notes that at some point between 1861-1865, Jarvis served as a private, in Company F of the 9th Regiment, Rhode Island Infantry.  By 1898, Jarvis met a turning point in his life when he was charged with the murder of Brinton Rounds. Born in 1863, Brinton was the son of Arnold and Marcy Rounds of Foster, Rhode Island. According to the 1885 State Census, his listed occupation was a farm laborer in Foster.

 In October of 1898,  Brinton was stabbed to death, and Jarvis was charged with his murder. I could not find any further details on the circumstances of the case,  but I did find that Jarvis was acquitted of all charges.

 His name was well “known  around the state” as the newspaper stated, “as the man who stabbed Brinton Rounds at Foster, in October, 1898.”  So how did Jarvis Smith die? His body was found, laying face down in a “rickety shed along the highway,” by two men who were “passing along the road leading from Round Top to Douglas.”  The shed was on the property of the old Arnold Estate. The Butterworth family was notified and Dr. Wilcox was called. When the doctor finally arrived, he ascertained the Jarvis had died from natural causes, predominately exposure to the elements after passing out from extreme drunkenness.

The 1900 census lists Jarvis as having worked for William Mowry in Smithfield as a laborer at Mowry’s steam sawmill. The newspaper stated that “since his trial for the murder of Brinton Rounds, he had been working at various things in Foster and Burrillville.”  The two weeks prior to his death, Jarvis had worked at a sawmill in Douglas. The Saturday before his death, he went on a bender lasting several days, eating little to nothing and drinking his cares away. Jarvis was 57 years old when he died, with no wife or children of his own. The final words of his obituary notice stated, “He was possessed of rather more than usual intelligence of his class and was a peaceable, kindly disposed citizen when sober.” —

So, we have learned that although there are a few deaths we can tie to the property, there are no documents of truly unusual types of deaths having occurred at the old Arnold Estate.  But what about the murder of Prudence Arnold that Lorraine Warren claimed took place in the pantry of the home?

The Uxbridge Tragedy, as the newspapers labeled it, was truly a very sad story, but it didn’t take place at the old Arnold Estate. Instead, it took place at the Richardson house in Uxbridge, Massachusetts in 1849. According to the Rochester Republican, William Knowlton, 22, cut the throat of 12-year-old Prudence Arnold, after she refused to marry him.

The Woonsocket Patriot also covered the story, adding that little Mary Thayer of Burrillville, was at the house with Prudence that day. Although Knowlton convinced Prudence to go upstairs, Mary remained downstairs and did not witness the actual act. She did say that when she saw Knowlton come down the stairs, she could see that he had a lot of blood on his hands. She ran up the stairs only to find Prudence laying on the floor, making noises. She eventually bled to death.

After apprehending Knowlton, the constable interrogated him. It was reported that Knowlton resolutely stated he had every intention to kill Prudence and followed through with it, because as he said, “love and jealousy would lead a man to do anything.” 

Some of the papers revealed that Knowlton was of low moral perception, and was prone to drinking a lot. The defense tried to use the insanity plea, but that failed in the end. Knowlton was found guilty of the murder of Prudence Arnold, convicted and sentenced to death by hanging.  Again, as horrific as this story may be, it did not take place at the Arnold Estate in Burrillville, Rhode Island.

Now that I have proven to you that none of the alleged murders or suicides took place at the old Arnold Estate, let’s look go back to Bathsheba’s story now and analyze how on earth this urban legend of sorts could have possibly started and taken on a life of its own over the years. 

For starters, you have to think back to when the rumors began.  The Kenyon family owned the property before the Perron’s bought it in 1971, and before that, the Kenyon’s ancestors, the Butterworth’s and even earlier, the Arnold’s had owned it since the 1700s.  Prior to the Perron family purchasing the property, there was no mention whatsoever of any sort of murders, witchcraft accusations or any sort of scandalous events tied to Bathsheba Sherman.

So were there any sort of terrifying stories in the local area that could have inspired the Bathsheba Sherman story? Yes. During my research of the history of Burrillville, I found another interesting tale about the Old Paul Place or "The Old Paul House."  It was said to be in ruins even at the time the book," Burrillville: As It Was, As It Is" was written in 1856. The home, or "castle" as it was called, was said to have been originally built and lived in by the Ballou family. Years later, Paul Smith and his family took up residence on the property.

“Not far from the center of the town, is a house, fast crumbling down, which has long been known as the above title ("Old Paul Place"). It was originally the residence of an ancient family of Ballou’s, a common name in this town.  A little to the east of the old castle are four graves where they were buried.

It was afterward occupied by Paul Smith. The old man met with many misfortunes which gives the place a romantic interest. His wife was insane for many years. She was confined in a lonely room, and with none of the appliances with which modern science and philanthropy soothe and improve the stricken mind, she sank into hopeless idiocy. One of the sons, an athletic young man, was engaged in a foot race in Slatersville, when he burst a blood-vessel and died in a short time.

Several families have resided there since Paul Smith died, but the edifice is at present forsaken,  the moss-grown roof has partly fallen, the massive chimney is breaking down, and the wild wind shrieks through the crazy fabric like the pitiful wail of its ruined  mistress. The forest is growing up all around it, and timersome do not like to frequent the place after nightfall. The raven croaks hoarsely from the open gable, and the twilight bat flits undisturbed through the forsaken and desolate apartments."---- "Burrillville: As It Was, As It Is." (Horace Keach, 1856)

Could this story have inspired part of the idea of the Bathsheba tale? Quite possibly. Not only does it speak of the mistress of the house becoming insane, but it speaks of the fact that many in the area were easily frightened by old, scary houses.  Then comes the story of Laura Sherman who is buried in her family cemetery on Buck Hill. Local teenagers have been flocking to this spot for decades due to the legend that if you circle her grave three times on a full moon, that she will appear.

The story about the Old Paul Place could have been passed down through the years and perhaps parts of that mixed with the old legend tripping tales of Laura Sherman’s grave on Buck Hill could have made for one big ghost story that has mistakenly become attached to the wrong person.

According to retired journalist and local historian Kent Spottswood, “This whole story is one of 1970’s folklore fantasy.”  Spottwood’s opinion is that after the publication of the Satanic bible, which was first published in 1969, that was when stories of devil worship really hit the mainstream. He also mentioned that many young women who were lonely and seeking power, turned to Wicca, becoming solitary practitioners of the craft, which became almost fashionable at the time.  It appears that someone, influenced by current events happening at that present time may have taken pieces of Burrillville history- real events, real people, and intertwined them with grossly fabricated, false stories. This not only sullied the reputation of Bathsheba Sherman, but all who were involved or lived on the property during those times.

“It’s not a matter of making up a theory and saying prove me wrong,” remarked Spottswood. “But that is exactly what has happened in the case of Bathsheba Sherman, and the old Arnold Estate’s history.”

The idea that out of all those years, one day this story just happened to come out of the woodwork to reveal itself is quite ludicrous. Bathsheba Sherman was not related to Salem witches, nor was she a witch. She was never suspected of witchcraft and was never accused of any crimes, murders or suspicious deaths. That entire idea was “conjured” up in the mind of someone either overly imaginative or delusional.  To make matters worse, once the rumors had spread, there was no taking them back.  Again, like the game of “telephone,” after this story was told and retold more and more, ridiculous claims have become attached to the story. And now we have the biggest fabrication of all, the film The Conjuring.

Kent Spottswood searched tirelessly for the history of both the Arnold property and Bathsheba Sherman’s life. At one point he even asked some of his lawyer friends to do some digging in the archives, in places the average person would not be allowed to look. After all the time spent searching for any shred of evidence that would back up the slanderous claims about Bathsheba, they “came up with nothing.”   There are no inquest records about any deaths of infants in the care of Bathsheba or of her own children dying of a suspicious nature. The facts are that there are no records in existence, because none of these events ever happened. According to the current owner of the old Arnold Estate property, Norma Sutcliffe, she also did thorough research on the home’s history and came to the same conclusion as Spottswood, that none of the accusations against Bathsheba ever took place as portrayed in the movie or Andrea Perron’s book.   

Norma insists that while visiting her house several years ago, Lorraine Warren walked around the home and told her, "This is such a loving home and the most wonderful place for the children.”  When asked by Sutcliffe why the Perron’s had experienced supernatural events and her family had not, Norma claims that Lorraine’s explanation was that certain dynamics within families can give rise to supernatural activity in a home. Whatever the case may have been, Norma and her husband have lived in the home since 1987, and besides the occasional creaking noises and doors being opened by drafty rooms, she states there hasn’t been any events she would credit to the spirit realm.  “Nothing has ever happened here that could not be explained by other things,” Norma added. Sutcliffe went on to mention that she told the same thing to the Providence Journal back in 1997. 

I received a package of sorts from Norma  while working on this chapter in my book. Among the many invaluable newspaper clippings dating back as early as 1849, up to the present day, I found a clipping of what appears to be a magazine article with the year “1985” scribbled on the margin. The headline of the piece read, “Fashion Model Meets Headless Ghost.”  At first glance it looked like a common tabloid story you might find while standing in line at the grocery store, but as I read the text of it something else became quite clear, it was all too familiar. 

The article described a couple by the names of Carol and Ronald Barron, giving accounts of their horrific experiences in their Rhode Island home.  The photograph actually shows the Old Arnold Estate, although the names were obviously changed for the article. From vicious attacks to horrific sounds, it details accounts one by one, as claimed by the lady of the house, Carol Barron, a former fashion model turned housewife. It highlights that the Warrens came to the rescue, per the Barron family’s request, but that although the Warrens tried to do their best to rid the home of the evil entities, their efforts failed.

 The most intriguing part of this article was towards the end, when Ed Warren was quoted mentioning that the 300 year old home had seen tragedies, such as suicides, drownings and even murder.  He also went on to mention that an 98-year-old woman had lived there who practiced witchcraft and as a gift to the Devil, she murdered her own child by driving a nail through it’s head.  Interesting, isn’t it?

Another thing to mention is that the article was written by a journalist named Tony Spera. Upon further  investigating, it turns out that he is Ed and Lorraine Warren’s son-in-law. The article then ends with the mention that the home was set to be buried under a huge reservoir planned to be constructed.  Of course we all know that didn’t take place, as the house still stands today. 

If this was the same home, and the Warrens claimed it was so plagued with problems that the only option was for it to be buried underwater, why did Lorraine tell Norma years later that the home was such a lovely place?  I think only  Lorraine Warren has the answer for that one.

My personal opinion on the “haunting” aspect of the home is that no one truly knows what happened in the house, except for the people who lived there at the time.  The fact that current owners of the home claim they do not experience negative activity leads me to believe that perhaps whatever was plaguing the Perron family while living there was brought there and left  when they moved.  Still, this chapter is not meant to be about the paranormal, but instead it is about the true history of the property and of Bathsheba.

Bathsheba Sherman was buried at the cemetery in Harrisville, alongside her first husband Judson, her children and other immediate family members. Her funeral was officiated by Rev. A. H. Granger, who was a well known and highly respected Baptist minister. Had Bathsheba been suspected of any sort of wrongdoing in her lifetime, there would have been a mention of it somewhere.

Another thing to consider, if such suspicion of her being involved in any sort of satanic rituals or witchcraft had been raised, she would have been shunned by the community and would not have had the full honors bestowed on her as a member of her church in her beloved hometown. 

To give any entity an identity and attach to them the name or stories of people who were once actual living human beings and then sully them in death is so very wrong.  This has happened to poor Bathsheba, and for far too long. My job as a writer is to sift through the story and get to the raw facts. Sometimes we find out that stories are not fact based, and so we have the responsibility to provide the true information to the public in order to set the stories straight. I truly hope that with this chapter, and the information I have posted on my blog, that Bathsheba’s true story will finally be told correctly.

I also hope that the stories of Susan, Edwin, John and Prudence Arnold will be told accurately, as well as the story of Jarvis Smith’s life and death.  A wise man once  told me, “It’s how we treat our dead that defines who we are.” So let us all treat these stories with the care and respect that they so deserve."

PLEASE HELP THE BURRILLVILLE HISTORICAL & PRESERVATION SOCIETY RAISE FUNDS TO REPLACE BATHSHEBA'S HEADSTONE!!  Her stone has been damaged beyond repair over the years due to the horrible vandalism caused by visitors who believed the horrid lies in the film, "The Conjuring." Please help us to help Bathsheba!  You can click here to donate to the fundraiser at Go Fund Me, or you can contact Betty Mencucci at the Burrillville Historical & Preservation Society at: 16 Laurel Hill Ave, Pascoag, Rhode Island, 02859 or call them at 401-568-8534.

----------- Copyright 2016, "Stories of the Forgotten: Infamous, Famous & Unremembered," by J'aime Rubio 

( ISBN-13:  978-1523981175)  www.jaimerubiowriter.com

All rights reserved.  J'aime Rubio identified as the AUTHOR and PUBLISHER of the work in accordance with all U.S. Copyright laws. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission by the author/publisher.

Source Citations:

U.S. Census, 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1885, 1900; United States Civil War Index, 1861-1865; Marriage, Death records from Burrillville Town Hall, Vol. 1. Deaths, 1854-1900, Vol. 1-A Marriages, 1846-1900; Bathsheba Sherman’s Will, (5-BUR-5-511), Public Records; Black Book of Burrillville; “Burrillville: As It Was, As It Is,” Horace Keach, 1856; Thayer Family Genealogy Records, Ancestry & Family Search; Information courtesy of Norma Sutcliffe: Copies of obituaries in archived Burrillville Gazette and Pascoag Herald, 1885, 1866, 1903, 1900, 1911, “Fashion Model Meets Headless Ghost,” Tony Spera, (unknown publisher), 1985; Providence Journal, 1997; Harrisville Cemetery records; U.S. Register of Historic Places; Find-a-grave; Baptist Missionary Magazine, 1848; Rochester Republican, 1849; Woonsocket Patriot, 1849; “House of Darkness, House of Light”- Andrea Perron, Author; Interview with Norma Sutcliffe, owner of Old Arnold Farm; Interview with Kent Spottswood, retired Journalist and local Historian.

The Mystery at the Maiden's Grave - Amador County History

Up Highway 88, just about 30 miles east of the town of Pioneer sits a monument known as the Maiden’s grave. The story behind this marker is quite interesting because it starts way back in 1850, during the time when families coming from the Eastern and Midwestern states were traveling in groups, trekking the dangerous terrain of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in hopes of starting a better life for themselves in California.

On one such trip, a young girl named Rachael fell ill and died as the group was traveling over the Carson Pass area. They stopped and buried the young girl in a wooded area under the base of a large Fir tree, and her mother as grief stricken as she was for having to leave her daughter’s body in the middle of unknown territory, vowed she would return one day to her daughter’s meager burial site.

As the years went on, Rachael’s mother grew older and older, and by the early 1900’s, over 50 years after her daughter’s death, she attempted to find the spot where she buried Rachael so many years before.

Unfortunately, she was unsuccessful in her quest and she returned from whence she came. After word spread in Amador County about the return of Rachael’s mother, various people who had been visiting nearby Kirkwood, just 10 miles to the east, had remembered running across a marked grave nearby in their travels.  The grave was located, and since word spread about this situation, others began remembering that it once was marked with a wooden cross that had the name “Melton” on it along with the date “October 4, 1850.”  Assuming that this grave was Rachael’s these guests from Kirkwood had a small headstone placed for Rachael in 1903.  This would now be known as the “Maiden’s Grave” and it would become the 28^th Historical Landmark in California.

Fast forward to 1986, and we learn that a local property owner, Steven Ferrari who lived in the area just about 2 miles from the “Maiden’s Grave” came upon a grave with a rock outline on it while clearing overgrown brush on his land. As it turns out, this is more than likely Rachael’s true resting place. (GPS coordinates: N 38° 38.357 W 120° 08.677) Mr. Ferrari had a plaque erected for this young lady buried in his backyard, and for those who know where it is, this is now known as the “Real Maiden’s Grave.”

So who is buried at the first location you might ask? Well, it took historians several years to research but as it turns out the answers were easier to find than you might think. According to the book “Annals of Iowa” there is a transcribed journal of a man named William Edmondson, and in that very journal he speaks of his journey from Iowa, through the Midwestern states and passing through Native-American territory and finally up the mountains through Colorado, Nevada and into California. When they finally made it to Tragedy Spring they found a wooden epitaph carved on the base of an old Fir tree. Shortly thereafter a member of his group fell ill and passed away, his name was Allen Melton. The date was October 4, 1850. The group buried their friend and continued on their journey finally stopping in Webberville, a now non-existent gold mining town that once was located along the American River just between Diamond Springs and Placerville.

In ending, although the historical landmark is still called the “Maiden’s Grave,” (GPS coordinates N 38° 37.908 W 120° 10.274) we know now that it wasn’t a maiden buried there at all, but a forgotten man.  If you are ever up in the vicinity of the Maiden’s Grave on Hwy 88, please drop in and pay your respects to Mr. Allen Melton. ---

(Copyright 2018- J'aime Rubio, www.jaimerubiowriter.com)

Sources:

Annals of Iowa, published in 1907, Page 535 (Journal of William Edmondson)

https://books.google.com/books?id=KFdIAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA535&lpg=PA535&dq=1850+allen+melton&source=bl&ots=5VENmolIGS&sig=LtjVgsMtHs3UDmq4-R1kRkgZkDw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjctqS4_4vbAhVN6Z8KHTb1A1cQ6AEwDnoECAEQWw#v=onepage&q=1850%20allen%20melton&f=false

https://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=100573

http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM3VHM_Carson_Pass_Higway_The_real_Maidens_Grave

http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM3VJ5_Carson_Pass_Highway_The_wrong_Maidens_Grave

The Story of Tragedy Spring - Amador County History

Tragedy Spring

Located on Highway 88, just 3 miles west of Silver Lake, in historic Amador County sits Tragedy Spring. This small spot set just a few hundred feet back from the highway has a dark and somber history for which it gained its name. Though there is a plaque honoring the men who were part of this tragic event, most people do not know much about who they were, or what led up to this event in the first place.

On June 22, 1848, three members of a scout group went ahead of their company of Latter Day Saints clearing a path over Carson Pass, which would come to be known as the Mormon Emigrant Trail. When the scouts were never heard from again, the men in their company began to worry.  Private Henderson Cox, from Warren County, Indiana; Ezra Heela Allen, from Madrid, New York; and Sargeant Daniel Browett, of Bishop’s Cleeve, England were the three men who disappeared.

Who were these missing men?

Ezra Heela Allen, was born on July 28, 1814 to parents Samuel Russell Allen and Sarah Jane Powers of St. Lawrence County, New York. In 1837, Ezra married Sarah Fiske and the couple had four children. He had been serving in the U.S. Army for period of time, and after his discharge he decided to join the scouting group under the command of Sgt. Daniel Browett, who were crossing over the pass while returning to Utah.

Private Henderson Cox, was born on November 6, 1829, to parents Jehu Cox and Sarah Pyle.  When Private Cox was only seventeen, he joined the U.S. Army and went to fight in the war with Mexico as part of the Mormon Battalion, under the command of Captain Allen and Captain Hunt in Company A. After his discharge he met Captain Browett in Coloma and started working at Sutter’s Mill. When asked to join Browett on a scouting mission to travel over Carson Pass in June of 1848, Cox jumped at the chance.

Sargeant Daniel Browett, was born on December 18, 1809 to parents Thomas Browett and Martha Puller. He was a native of Bishop’s Cleeve, Gloucestershire, England.  At the age of 25, Browett started his apprenticeship in carpentry and later joined the United Brethren Church. Besides working as a Carpenter, he also learned to be a joiner and a cooper.  Later, Browett would join the Church of Latter Day Saints and become a Presiding Elder.

From 1846-1847, Browett was called to serve as a commissioned Sargeant for Company E in the Mormon Battalion during the war with Mexico.  Once he was discharged in Los Angeles at Fort Moore, Browett decided to head up north to offer his expertise at Sutter’s Fort, where skilled Carpenters were scarce. He eventually headed up-country further, to a place called Coloma to help build the sawmill for Captain Sutter. Interesting to note, Browett was working under the direction of James Marshall and six others when the first discovery of gold was found in the American River in 1848. He was literally in Coloma when the gold rush began!

After his work was through in Coloma, Browett was sent to inform Captain Sutter that the work was done on the mill and to gather the wages for all workers as well as other furnishings and animals that were promised. While there, he arranged to purchase two cannons from Sutter for the LDS Church in Utah. Interestinly, these cannons are very similar to the one that is infamously known as the “Sutter Gun”, though they are not the same. Although Sutter purchased the “Sutter Gun” from the Russians when they abandoned Fort Ross, the other two cannons purchased for the LDS Church, (a four-pounder and a six-pounder), were said to be among other items Sutter obtained at the Fort at the same time.  As it turned out, the four-pounder brass cannon was not Russian at all, but was in fact cast in Peru in 1792 by the Spanish. Both cannons Browett purchased from Sutter for the LDS Church were said to have been previously owned by Napoleon but had been left behind in Russia before being brought to Fort Ross.  After obtaining the cannons, they were placed in the care of the company that were going to be returning to Utah.

Before the Tragedy

It was then that these three men were sent on ahead to scout the thick forest and rocky terrain ahead of the road crew who were planning on clearing a trail from the Mormon Camp in Sly Park up through the Carson Pass.  The three men left on June 22, 1848 and never came back. By mid-July, a follow up road crew who had cleared a good 10 miles on the path found a dead campfire and a pile of rocks that appeared to be a shallow grave. The men returned to their main camp and told of their discovery, to which more men came to investigate the site.  On July 19, 1848, they removed the pile of rocks to reveal the bodies of their lost party members: Browett, Cox and Allen.

They were "promiscuously tossed in a shallow two foot grave, stripped of clothing, and maimed if not mutilated."-- Larry Cenotto,  Amador County Historian. 

Browett had been murdered with a hatchet, and shot in the eye, while his other friends had been shot with arrows. It also appeared that they had been beaten over the head with rocks, as the rocks buried with their bodies were stained with blood and chunks of hair was stuck to them.  All of their weapons, supplies, horses and money was gone, all except a small pouch of gold that Allen would wear around his neck. It contained $120 worth of gold dust, but it appeared the strap had been severed and flung into a bush, possibly during the fatal struggle.

After the gruesome discovery was found, a member of their party, James Sly mentioned that on his way back to camp they passed many Indians and one of the natives was wearing a vest that looked familiar. It later donned on him that vest belonged to one of his fallen friends who died at Tragedy Spring. From the evidence of the arrows and the hatchet, and the native wearing one of the victim’s vests, it wasn’t difficult for the group to put two and two together and realize that Browett, Allen and Cox had been ambushed by Indians.

Jonathan Harriman Holmes mentions this horrific memory within the pages of his journal, "Trail Journal of 1848." In fact, he physically viewed the bodies of the slain men at the site, where he mentions that Daniel Browett was like a father to him.

That night the party who discovered the ghastly site, worried for their own safety as well, as journal entries noted in the book, “Mormon Battalion: United States Army of the West, 1846-1848” mentions that night the cattle they had with them were spooked and literally causing a stampede. The party believed Indians were around and so they fired their cannon once to scare them off. It mentions that the rest of the night was quiet and they had guards posted, but the party members still had a hard time sleeping.

(Copyright: R. Boulware, 2017)

Before moving onward, the corpses of the victims were reburied in a more honorable way, and Wilford Hudson carved a beautiful epitaph into the side of a large Fir tree nearby the graves.  It read:

“To the Memory of Daniel Browett, Ezrah H. Allen, Henderson Cox, Who was supposed to have Been Murdered and Buried by Indians On the Night of the 27^th June 1848”— And that was how the name Tragedy Spring came to be.

According to the research of the late, great Amador County Historian Larry Cenotto, he mentioned that several people over the years have tried to insinuate that it wasn't the natives who committed the atrocity, but instead "white ruffians" who were coveting gold that committed the murders. They also argued that the natives wouldn't have buried the dead in a grave. With all due respect, a hole barely two feet deep cannot be considered a grave. In reality, it was more of a shallow pit where they tried to hide the bodies, by piling rocks on top of them. 

But then Larry brought up a good question:  "Why would any white ruffian leave the mines to rob? They could get more gold in the diggings. And why would they leave the gold pouch?"

Another thought to ponder was that the location where Tragedy Spring is, which is near Kirkwood, is a remote area, especially back in 1848.  There were no mines in that area, there were no stores, no stage stops nearby, this was the wilderness we're talking about here!  Why on earth would some ne'er-do-wells be hanging out out in the middle of nowhere just randomly waiting to rob the group of men? They wouldn't. They were not waiting for a stage coach to come by, the men were traveling on a small trail, not a stage road. In all fairness, all the evidence points to the natives committing this act, whether others want to accept this or not. When we look at evidence in history, we must come to our conclusions based on documented facts, and those point towards the original conclusion. 

As the years went by, the tree was later cut down, and the part that contained the carved epitaph was sent to the museum at Marshall Gold Discovery Park in Coloma to be put on display. Later the tree stump was treated with a resin to harden the stump, in order to preserve it from decaying.  In 1967, the International Society of Daughters of Utah Pioneers who attached a bronze plaque on a large rock that had been placed on top of the victims graves.

Today, you can take a trip up scenic Highway 88 and stop off at the picnic grounds and pay your respects to these three men who died at the spring in 1848.  You can also visit the Marshall Gold Discovery Park in Coloma and see the originally carved epitaph for these three men.

(Copyright 2018 -- J'aime Rubio, www.jaimerubiowriter.com) 

A big THANK YOU to Shirleen Craig Farley for her allowing me to mention some of the information from her own research as well as her own family records that belonged to her grandmother. 

SOURCES:

Logan's Alley - Amador County Yesterdays in Picture and Prose, by Larry Cenotto, 2003.

Mormon Battalion: United States Army of the West, 1846-1848  (Norma B Ricketts):

https://books.google.com/books?id=lWjgCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT442&lpg=PT442&dq=cannons+sold+to+mormons+fort+ross&source=bl&ots=482-hPFSHW&sig=Qb9n7NAuEEVadUIvyHJ2YMbzdBY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwju1pu5y5DbAhUmiFQKHYfYBdYQ6AEwBHoECAEQQA#v=onepage&q=Browett&f=false

Tragedy Springs and the Pouch of Gold"- Norma B. Ricketts (California State Library in Sacramento)

http://mormonhistoricsites.org/tragedy-spring-amador-county-ca/

https://www.mtdemocrat.com/prospecting/theyll-be-bringing-out-the-big-gun-at-marshall-gold-discovery-park/

Find-a-grave:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/33293416/daniel-browett

Shirleen Craig Farley’s added research from Find-a-grave

Preston Nibley, "Faith Promoting Stories" Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1943, Page 93

Green, "Road from El Dorado", p. 17, 20.

Johnathan H. Holmes Journal, July 19, 1848, LDS Church Archives

Journal of Henry W. Bigler, January 24, 1848; Bigler, Henry W., Henelepikale, "Recollections of the Past", Juvenile Instructor 21, No. 23 (1 Dec. 1886): p. 365-66.

The True History of the Ione Hotel

The True History of the Ione Hotel

What happens to a glass of Coca-Cola when it is put under a faucet and the water is then turned on? The Coca-Cola then becomes displaced, and while water dilutes it and continues to dilute it, eventually the glass of Coke is no longer there, but only water in its place.

Well, that is what happens when people decide that the true history of a person, place or even an object is not enough as it is, that they need to add more and more to it until the real history becomes invisible, or almost untraceable, and the fabricated legends and folklore take on a life of its own, often times becoming accepted as fact.

One such example of this is the Ione Hotel. Over the years a lot of misinformation has spread in regards to the hotel’s true history and now it seems almost impossible to find any accurate information about it to date. That will change starting with today. 

If you look up the history of this hotel online or in recent books, you will find a plethora of information. Unfortunately, most of the information is incorrect. So that was why I decided to dig through the archived newspapers, old history books and records to find the real history behind this hotel so that I could share it once and for all with you! 

The Ione Hotel has been called the Metropolitan, The Union Hotel, The Haller Hotel, The Golden Star Hotel, and even The Bedbug Inn, but the history of this hotel is much more interesting than even its various names over the years.

This blog took a while for me to research, and it is going to be long, but trust me, it will be worth the read. In this article I will go through not only the history of the hotel, backed up with factual information and documentation, but I will also address the local legends and lore.

To start off, I have always loved this hotel. I used to roam the halls on summer days when I was staying up at my dad’s on Sutter Lane back in the 1990’s.  A friend and I would often wander around Ione during the summer, and sometimes for kicks we would ask the owners of the hotel to let us explore the so-called “haunted” hotel.  Of course as teenagers, we would scare ourselves, which made it all the more fun! Afterwards we would head over and get a slice of pizza at Loretta’s or over to the diner to get a soft serve cone. This was the time of my teenage years I found interest in Preston Castle and its history as well.  It shouldn’t surprise anyone that I would eventually research Ione Hotel’s history, too.

Ione’s Early History

To begin with, Ione was not the typical town or city during the Gold Rush. In fact, Ione’s Main Street was not built up until the mid to late 1850’s to begin with. Yes, some people moved there around 1848 and 1849, but it was only a handful of miners and settlers who built their homes. Ione itself did not become a bustling place until at it’s earliest the mid 1850’s. You can verify this by reading The History of Amador County by Jesse D. Mason which is available on Google Play to read for FREE. So for the record, this particular hotel could not have existed in 1849 as some other articles have suggested.

The earliest hotels that I found in Ione were the Irena House, owned by Thomas Rickey, and the Ione Valley Hotel. Again, this was during the 1850’s. The Irena house was next door to where the City Hall sits today, and the Ione Valley Hotel’s location is unknown. I could find no records that state where it was located in town at all, but we know it existed and the book The History of Amador County mentions it to have been one of the oldest buildings erected in town. It also mentions that it burned during the Great Fire of Ione on October 8, 1865.  Could it have been at the location where the present day Ione Hotel sits? Possibly, but unlikely. Why?

Well, the late, great Amador County Historian Larry Cenotto pointed out in a fantastically written article back in 1995 that deed records indicated the original two lots (a small one and a larger one) where the hotel sits today were originally a butcher shop and a saddlery shop. Per Larry Cenotto’s research it wasn’t until later on in the 1870’s, (on the small lot), that the first hotel was erected and named the Metropolitan. It had only five rooms, a saloon and a dining area. The man who operated that hotel was Frederick Haas.

In 1876, there are only two hotels in Ione by this point, one of which was the Veranda Hotel and of course the Metropolitan. By the 1880’s the Glaze brothers owned the property. In 1880, Ione was flooded when the creek overflowed and backed up into Main Street. It was such a bad flood, that 1,300 feet of railroad track was washed away. No doubt all the businesses on Main Street suffered some serious water damage from this flood.

After a fire at the Veranda Hotel (just down the street) on January 26, 1884, the Eaton family who had been running the Veranda Hotel, went over to work for the Glaze brothers.  The Metropolitan Hotel was then renamed the Union Hotel.

Veranda Hotel History (Location: City Hall)

The Daily Alta California dated January 27, 1884 mentions the fire at the Veranda Hotel. It also notes that a gentleman named Thomas Bennett lost his life in the fire. This is important to remember as we go further into this blog, because this is the ONLY hotel fire in Ione during that time period in which a death occurred.

It is noted in the Volcano Weekly Ledger that the Veranda House was built on the lot next door to where the Irena House once stood, which indicates or insinuates the latter was destroyed. I found an ad for the Veranda Hotel in the Volcano Weekly Ledger dating back to 1857. When the Veranda burned down in 1884, Mr. McCauley eventually purchased the land from Mrs. Kingsley and built his Commercial Hotel there. Of course later on it became the spot where City Hall is now situated.

Another Flood

The March 24, 1893 edition of the Amador Ledger tells of the creek once again backing up, which overflowed into businesses. The water caused damage to the lower level of the Union Hotel again, along with their stage barn. At this time period, the hotel had a stage stop there for passengers to rest in between stages and to obtain transportation to the railroad.

Renovations to the Hotel

“The old Union Hotel has been refitted and renovated throughout by its new proprietor J.S. Amick. The house is well known for its clean, sunny rooms, white (as distinguished from Chinese) cooking and well set table.  The hotel has no bar, is situated in the central part of town and caters especially to families and ladies.”— Amador Record (April 1897) c/o Larry Cenotto’s research in the Amador Ledger 6/26/1995

By 1900, Joseph and Rosa Tonzi, natives of Switzerland, purchased the Union Hotel.  Sadly though, the hotel didn’t last very long.

Fire of 1900

“Disastrous Fire in Ione – About 12 o’clock last Monday night the denizens of our sister town were aroused by the dread alarm of fire. The fire started in the Union Hotel’s bakery in the rear of the Union Hotel. It was soon fanned by the breeze into a devastating blaze. The Union Hotel and Robert Mayes’ saloon were soon in a blaze and for other food the fire fiend hit upon the old stage stables, devouring that also.

Hopper’s General merchandise store, a fireproof building, sustained a loss of $1,000. The loss to the hotel and saloon is estimated at $9,000, besides private losses to inmates, and the insurance amounts to $3200, $600 of which is on the saloon. The inmates of the hotel succeeded in escaping, though none of them were able to save anything beyond what they wore, and that was very little in most cases. No one was seriously injured, but several narrow escapes were reported. This is the most disastrous conflagration Ione has had in some years.”--- Amador Ledger, January 19, 1900.

After this fire, the Tonzi family chose to erect another hotel in its place, but their first one was poorly made and only lasted nine years before burning up in another fire in 1909.

Fire of 1909

“Fire in Ione – Of the fire which destroyed Haller’s Hotel in Ione last Thursday, the Echo says:

“Soon after the fire broke out Superintendent Randall of the Preston School, dispatched a number of his boys who have been drilled in the method of fighting fires, and they mounted to the roofs and handled the hose and fire axes in true fireman fashion, aiding very materially in saving George Woolsey’s building, and thereby the whole north side of Main Street, and they are deserving a great deal of credit.

The hotel was a flimsy constructed two-story frame building, owned by Mrs. Tonzi of Mt. Echo, and J.M. Haller the lessee. The building was insured in the Orient Insurance Company, J.W. Surface agent, for $1,000 which will go a long way toward covering the loss. Mr. Haller, the lessee, estimates his loss at $1,600 with $450 of insurance. Mr. Haller’s loss is nearly total, as much of the stuff moved out of the hotel was either destroyed or so badly damaged as to be worthless.

The loss to Sibole & Gillum was by water and smoke and is fully covered by insurance, as is, also the damage to the building. Hammer’s store, a flimsy frame structure a few feet west of the hotel, was saved only by the greatest exertion, and that, in large part, by some of our women, who formed a bucket brigade and kept the premises thoroughly wet, at the expense of disheveled hair and bedraggled wearing apparel. Prominent among them was noticed Ida Williams, Mrs. Maddux, Mrs. Nichols, Mrs. Hammer, Mrs. Cotto, Mrs. Fissier, Mrs. Browning, Alice Greenhaigh, and Ethel Mack and there might have been others.

Soon after the fire started somebody telephoned the fact to Jackson and at once John Gabarini, Chief of the Fire Department there, hitched up a team, loaded in two fire extinguishers and 150 feet of fire hose, took in D.S. Mason, and made the drive twelve miles in forty-five minutes. He arrived too late to be of any assistance, but the neighborly act was highly appreciated by everybody in Ione.”----Amador Ledger, June 4, 1909

The Golden Star Hotel

At this point the Tonzi family was through with wooden structures, so they bought the larger lot next door and decided to expand and erect a much larger, beautiful stone hotel instead and renamed it the Golden Star Hotel. The Tonzi's would have different people run the hotel for them, such as Mrs. M.C. Jarvis, or E.F. Mueller, but the hotel always belonged to the Tonzi family.

The old well that once sat at the back of the lot obviously couldn’t be moved, so during the construction of their grand stone hotel, the Tonzi’s decided to build around the well, which in later years would stir up some controversy and superstitions about the well's origins. (We will discuss the well later on in this article.)

The property remained in the Tonzi family up until Dorothy Stacey purchased the hotel in 1971. It was during Dorothy’s ownership that she briefly named the hotel the Bedbug Inn. It didn’t stay that way for long and it eventually became the Ione Hotel (or Hotel Ione).

New History at the Hotel (1977- 1988)

In April of 1977, Bill and Milly Jones, of Walnut Creek purchased the hotel and dove headfirst into the hospitality industry. I was able to speak to Milly Jones over the phone and ask her some questions about what she remembered when she owned the hotel with her husband, as well as clearing up some misinformation about some of the legends and lore at the hotel.  At 90 years old, she is still very much a lively, kind and quick-witted gal and it was such a pleasure to speak with her.

According to Milly’s book "The Hotel Ione," and other various news clippings of the time, the hotel catered to the working man. Most of their residents worked all week in labor jobs and went home to their families on the weekends. Many of the men who worked on Rancho Seco, stayed at their hotel during the week as well.

It was around the time that Milly and Bill bought the hotel that the rumors of the hotel being haunted started to make their rounds about Amador County.  My parents lived on Marlette in town, and my mother remembers when the ghost stories started to pick up steam in the late 1970s.  A funny tidbit to add to this story is that while I spoke to Milly on the phone, I learned that it was my father (who owned a carpet store in Jackson) who laid the carpet at their hotel in the late 1970s. So I guess in a way I have some family history at this hotel, too!

It was while Milly and her husband were running the hotel that they discovered the covered well in the middle of the building. According to Milly, her husband was the first to inspect it, and discovered a very well-made stone well going all the way down. There is also a drain at the bottom that goes to the creek.  Bill noticed something was stuck at the bottom, so they called the Fire Department to come out. With the use of a grappling hook they were able to pull out an old antique hobby horse which more than likely dated back to the late 1800’s or early 1900’s. Milly claimed in the Amador Progress News (Ione Valley Echo) dated back in June 25, 1980 that shortly after opening the well, supernatural events started occurring.

ad for TV show featuring Ione Hotel, 1980

Because the well was at the ground level, Bill decided to add stones to build a traditional well from the ground level up equipped with a hanging bucket, wheel and rope. At that point the layout of the hotel was very much different than it is today. The big staircase going up to the second level was set further back inside the hotel and the well was situated just to the left of the stairs. If you visit the hotel today, you will notice the well is set back in the dining room, and the new staircase is way up front near the front door of the lobby. So unless you know how the hotel was back then, it might be hard for you to wrap your head around the old layout.

During the 1980’s “Ripley’s Believe it or Not!” came to film segments about the ghost stories swirling around town about the hotel, as well as local news crews. Even the television show “That’s Incredible!” hosted by Ted Bateman came to town to film for several days. It really wasn’t until the Jones’ came to the hotel that the property got so much exposure for its alleged hauntings, and the ghost stories have continued to spread since then as well.

After Bill suffered from a severe back injury in 1984, Milly hired a friend of theirs, Morgan to run the hotel and saloon for them. By July 1, 1984 they sold the hotel to Loretta Tillery.

While Loretta Tillery owned the hotel, another news crew with television journalist Jonathan  Mumm came to film a short segment about the hotel being haunted. You can watch the video here from Youtube.

As you can see the layout of the upstairs was also different, which means the room numbers were in different places as well. This is also an important thing to remember as we get further into the blog with the legends and lore.

In 1988, while Loretta Tillery and three other co-owners: Jay McCarthy, Jerry Cassesi and Bonnie Aparicio were in the middle of completely renovating the hotel, and were just about to sell the property to new owners the last week of June, the hotel caught fire.  The stone hotel built painstakingly by the Tonzi family in 1910, that stood for nearly 78 years was completely gutted on Father’s Day, June 19, 1988.

Fire of 1988

According to my interview with Milly, it was on Father’s Day, one of the families living in the hotel at the time decided to go across the street to get hot chocolate but they left their young child alone in the room along with a baby sleeping in a crib. Milly's recollection was that the young child had found a cigarette lighter and was playing with it. When the parents looked up at the hotel window they saw the curtains on fire. They rushed in and got their children, but the fire gutted the entire hotel. The newspapers claimed that a young child was playing with matches when the fire started. 

According to the Amador Dispatch dated June 22, 1988, it states the fire took place on Sunday at around 10 a.m. Not only did the hotel burn but also the offices of Ione Realty and the newly opened restaurant the Pasta House which had just celebrated their grand opening two nights earlier.

“It took us four years to get this far,” stated Loretta Tillery, mentioning her recent construction in the hotel. “All renovations were done except one room!”

Fire that gutted the Ione Hotel 1988.

According to Carole Perry at Century 21, the owners were in the process of selling the hotel for $350,000 to excited buyers. Once learning about the fire, the buyers were truly devastated.  The fire reached temperatures of up to 3000 degrees and crews from all over the county and other nearby areas came to help in the rescue effort, to no avail. Even some of the boys at Preston and volunteer firefighters from Mule Creek State Prison joined in the effort.  Out of 60 firefighters who fought the blaze, only two were injured. According to records, the struggle to extinguish the fire had to do with a lack of water available. A distribution valve was not operating properly thus not allowing the right volume of water to be accessible to the fire crews.

In all, 23 people who were living at the hotel were homeless (12 of which were children). After it was all said and done, the owners of the hotel expressed their deepest gratitude to everyone who helped fight the fire and published their letter in the Amador Dispatch on June 24, 1988. The hotel sat for years empty, lifeless and gutted.

A New Chapter

Then in the mid 1990’s new owners Dorothy and Tom Shone purchased the property and put all their blood, sweat and tears into completely reestablishing the Ione Hotel, and bringing it back to life again.

In later years, the hotel was sold again to Mahmood Ghani, and now it is ran by the new proprietors Steve and Cindy Burke. The Burke family has definitely done a fantastic job with bringing the Ione Hotel back to its original grandeur. It is so lovely that I am sure even the Tonzi family would be proud! It was a pleasure visiting the hotel recently and speaking to Cindy. She was very gracious and allowed me access to the upstairs to roam around and even let me peek down the well in the middle of her restaurant, while she entertained her patrons eating dinner! The hotel looks even more beautiful than I remembered from the 1990’s when I last visited.   The dark mahogany wood throughout the entire building is something dreamy, like a step back in time to another era. 

Cindy was more than hospitable and answered many questions. When asked about the haunted aspect of the hotel she explained that she herself has not had any supernatural experiences there and believes there is an explanation for most things and stated, “even if someone dies in a place it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s now haunted.” Alejandro, a member of staff who met us upstairs and let us in some of the rooms to photograph said he hasn’t had anything paranormal happen. However, he did say if there is anything other-worldly hanging out there, “if they want to party, let them party, just don’t bother me.”

All in all, I would say that the hotel is in great hands, and I can see that the Burke’s truly love the hotel and it shows. It is apparent that they are doing a fine job carrying on in the footsteps of their predecessors before them, including the founders of the stone hotel, the Tonzi family.

Urban Legends, Local Folklore & Ghost Stories

So now to the part some of you have been waiting for….the “other side” of the Ione Hotel. In the recent years there have been a lot of paranormal investigators and websites that mention the hotel's haunted history and well, let's just say, much of it isn't paranormal at all. Well, let’s go down the line and address some of the urban legends and lore (or ghost stories) of the hotel and then I will either confirm or debunk them for you. Ready? Let’s go!

·         The Black Rose

Said to have been a prostitute in the late 1800’s that committed suicide in her room. Stories include that there is a mark in one of the rooms that will not wash away or if painted it comes back. I could not find one single account in any of the old newspapers of the area mentioning any sort of incident at the hotel involving a prostitute who committed suicide, so it looks like this is just another fabricated story. According to the new owners, Cindy Burke, she knows nothing of this story. Even former owner, Milly Jones stated the only thing she had heard was that the door to George Williams’ room (which was at that time #4) had a dark knot in the wood grain that some people had mentioned, but it was not anything supernatural. For the record, there were NO prostitutes who killed themselves in the hotel at any time, so this legend is debunked!

·       Mary Phelps

This story is tricky, and the reason I say this is because I am not one to dismiss someone’s personal experiences. If Milly Jones claims that she had an encounter with an entity and the name Mary Phelps came up, I am not going to say she didn’t. As the story went, (and you can read it in Milly’s Book on Amazon) the entity identified herself as Mary Phelps and that her grandson died in a fire there.  Again, she claims a family member of the person came and confirmed it. However, there were no fires in this hotel that took the lives of anyone at any time. So again, I will not dismiss this experience, but I can say that no one died in a fire at this hotel at any time and you can feel free to search the Amador County Library’s newspaper archives too, for your own verification of this.

Room # 12 ( possibly where room #4 used to be)

·        George Williams

Now, George Williams is a chap that did exist, and he did die at the hotel. This is actually a true story. George lived in room # 4, which is not the same as the # 4 at the hotel today. Remember after the fire in 1988, the layout was changed dramatically when it was rebuilt on the inside. So walls are in places they weren’t before, and rooms have been renumbered. Remember earlier I mentioned that the staircase was set further back before? Well, according to my calculations where George’s room was (#4) I believe it is where or close to where Room # 12 sits now. Again, give or take a few feet. It is definitely on that side of the hotel though.

According to Milly, there were plenty of people back in the 1970’s who remembered George well, and confirmed he died of a heart attack in his room at the hotel. Bill Ketchum was quoted in the newspaper back in 1980 talking about this very thing. Also, Milly told me that one of her neighbors, an elderly lady, admitted that both she and another lady had helped George get up to his room on the night that he died. He was very drunk, so they guided him up the stairs, and plopped him down on his bed. They even went so far as to take his shoes off and cover him up with a blanket before shutting the door behind him.  Although he died of a heart attack it sounds to me like he passed in his sleep, and since he was so drunk, let’s hope he didn’t feel a thing!  George is buried at the old Catholic Cemetery in town.

George Williams' Grave  (J. Rubio)

·        The Well

Okay, so now we are onto the well. So there has been some misinformation about the origins of the well, so I wanted to clear this up with you first. I have heard from several people that the story going around for years was that this was an ancient Miwok Indian well, and that because of this the well could not be touched and the hotel had to be built around it. That is completely false!

This well does NOT date back to the Miwok Indians. I am not sure who started this rumor years ago, but they obviously didn’t look into the customs and living traditions of Native Americans.  The Miwok (coastal and inland) were not known for digging wells. Also, the well is only 50-100 yards from the creek. The creeks, rivers and streams were the water source they would use to begin with. Some tribes of Native Americans in the plains and especially desert areas like Arizona are known for digging aqueducts or trenches but not the type of well that we are talking about here.

Looking down the well

So for the record, this well, was hand built with stone all the way to the bottom, and even Milly Jones recalled her husband noticing the stonework all the way down when he first opened the cover of the well back in the late 1970's. She also mentioned to me that it has a drain at the bottom which flows out to the creek. This was a very well constructed well-water system for that time period and it mimics the wells found in Europe.

So now we know this was a “caucasian” hand-built well, probably constructed around the time the saddlery shop and barber shop were situated on those lots in mid 1800's. According to Milly, there were three original wells in Ione and one of the other wells is located in the basement of a business just across the street.

Another thing to mention is that I scoured through the archives of the newspapers in Amador County and found no trace of evidence that anyone fell down this well, or died in it at any point in time. (A lot of people try to insinuate a child fell in and died). 

·       Phantom Odor 

According to Milly’s book there was a strange odor that would appear in the lobby on Saturday mornings and would last about 15 minutes and then dissipate. Later on, it was quoted in an online article that later owner Mahmood Ghani complained of the same thing, and the article went so far as to claim he hired someone to perform an exorcism to rid the hotel of the stink, as funny as that sounds!

Well, the new proprietors have had no such issues whatsoever and Cindy told me when she moved in, the grease traps looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in years. The hotel was in such a poor state, they had a lot of cleaning and restoring to do, and have never had any issue with any phantom smells.  After speaking to Milly, I think I figured out the cause of the phantom smell that plagued the hotel at certain times.  

Well, back in the 1970’s the plumbing and the drainage systems in Ione weren’t always the best, plus on a Saturday, the busiest day of the week, there was a lot of showers running and toilets being flushed all at once, which Milly and I believe that could have caused a back-up in the sewer or drainage system and if the vents weren’t working right, a smell could have temporarily backed up into the hotel for a few minutes. That is the most likely scenario.

·       Haunted Room #13

In all my research I have not found any credible stories relating to room #13, only recent online articles mentioning it. I will say though it is in the same general area near where room #4 originally was (although I still think room #12 is more closely situated to the original room #4).  You must remember the layout of the hotel was much different back then, so the rooms are not in the exact spot they once were, and it is even possible that half of room #12 and half of room #13 are in the same spot where the original room #4 was due to the change of the construction plans and layout when new walls and doorways were put up after the fire in 1988. 

According to Jonathan Mumm, the same news reporter in the Youtube video above, he stated that Tom Shone had told him that he renumbered  room # 4 to room # 13 after they remodeled the hotel in 1995. He claimed that he changed the room to # 13 to be spookier. Again, George's room was originally very narrow (and you can see it by the Youtube video above), and some of the rooms you find there today seem a bit wider now, because of the construction and rebuild after the fire of 1988. 

If you would like to read more about the alleged hauntings at the hotel, you will have to read Milly Jones’ book "The Hotel Ione" on Amazon, as I don’t delve too deep into the paranormal, I prefer to dig for the factual history of a location and share that instead.

I hope that you enjoyed this step back into the past to learn the history of this beautiful hotel and I hope that the current owners continue to preserve, protect and share this history with the world. In ending, let me quote something that Amador County Historian Larry Cenotto once wrote back in 1995, when he was giving advice to the new owners Dorothy and Tom Shone, “The writer encourages them to ascertain and promote its real history –that is interesting enough for anyone.”

Thank you Larry, I couldn’t agree more.

Happy History Hunting!! 

(Copyright 2018- J'aime Rubio, www.jaimerubiowriter.com)

Photography by Roland Boulware.

All sources available upon request