Each year, Valentine’s Day brings out couples celebrating their love stories. Young, old and in-between, the happy couples fill local restaurants to capacity, while challenging florists to demonstrate enduring commitment and eternal love with elaborate bouquets of fresh flowers.
Meanwhile, in cemeteries around Georgia, some stories of eternal love and tragic consequences remain buried with the forgotten participants — unless there’s a haunting presence that catapults the tale back into the consciousness of the living.
In nearby Roswell, we found two of those tragic, eternal love stories, just in time for a Valentine’s Day retelling.
First, we’ll recount a folklore story, for which we could find no specific records or other “evidence.” But, in 2007, author Dianna Avena included the tragic Roswell love story of Michael and Catherine in her 2007 book, Roswell : history, haunts and legends. We found a copy of the book in The Georgia Room at The Switzer Library in Marietta, but there it’s reference only and not available for check-out. But, for the paranormal curious, it is available for check-out at the East Cobb Library.
We’ll also mention that in addition to her book, Avena owns Roswell Ghost Tours and is one of the guides for the haunted sojourns. We’ve not taken on (yet), but we’ll put it on our list for when warmer weather returns.
The story also was retold in 2018 by Georgia Public Broadcast.
This Civil War-era Romeo and Juliet story featured Michael, a Union soldier, and Catherine, the daughter of a mill worker at Roswell Mill. When a scandalous romance was discovered between the Yankee soldier and the local damse, Michael was hanged for treason in the town square. Catherine, the telling goes, watched from the hanging from an upstairs window at The Public House, which formerly was the Mill commissary. Heartbroken and alone, Catherine was found hanging from the large beams of the upstairs floor of the commissary.
United again in death, these forever lovers are said to continue their eternal romance at The Public House. According to the Georgia Public Broadcast story, locals “swear they’ve seen ghostly figures in the upstairs windows of the commissary dancing in each other’s arms.”
The second Roswell love story is equally tragic, and also documented in records. Again, the Roswell Mill plays a prominent part in this tragic love, this one based in the forced deportation of female workers and their children from Roswell.
In July 1864, Union troops entered Roswell and found that the Roswell Mill was producing wool for Confederate forces. General William T. Sherman ordered the mill workers arrested and deported.
One of those workers was Adeline Bagley Buice. A seamstress at the mill, Adeline found she was pregnant after her husband had shipped out with the Confederate Army. According to her family’s history, she was deported to Chicago, and left to survive on her own. She eventually returned to Roswell on foot five years later with her daughter, hoping to learn if her husband had survived the war.
And he had. But, not knowing Adeline’s whereabouts or status, the husband had remarried just a year before her return. The family history indicates that Adeline remained in the area. She died and is buried in Forsyth County, where her grave is tended by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
