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The Gentle Spirit of Mattye Chandler (from the series the Restless Spirits of Caroline County)

The Gentle Spirit of Mattye Chandler
A Ghost Story Of Old Bowling Green
By Susan Sili

There once was a time when Bowling Green was still very young.  This was a time when the famous old trees still grew wild on the Courthouse Lawn and the streets, yet unpaved, rambled here and there while gaslights lit the village of Bowling Green. In those days too, the old tavern still stood, a witness to the Revolution and host to the founding fathers of a new "Commonwealth" called Virginia. It was this tavern, known as New Hope, the townspeople saved during the fire of 1900 by running with wet blankets and sheets to drape the old clapboard sides. Here too, on the rambling streets were beautiful homes embraced by more huge old trees stretching out like arms in all directions, lending the town the dream-like quality known in old photographs today. These were the days of Mattye Chandler and the Bowling Green she knew.

Mattye’s home was on a lane which was then called as it is today, Milford Street. She came there as a bride in 1902. It is a wondrous house of enormous proportions, a castle of sorts with rooms which seem to go on forever. It is a house for a young bride, a handsome groom and a perfect house for children. The house is made for raising a family and for a large extended family, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, full of laughter, celebrating birthdays and holidays. There is a timeless quality about the house that is warm and full of promise.

A portrait of young Mattye before her marriage shows her extraordinary serene beauty and near perfect features. One is drawn to her lovely face and soft dark hair but it is the eyes which hold you fast and keep you, vividly dark, full of character, strength and personality. She would need that strength for the life Mattye surely envisioned on the night of May 14th 1902 when she married Ferdinand Chandler in the Christian Church in Bowling Green, sadly was not to be hers.

Mattye was the daughter of Charles Lindsay Collins, and a member of a well known Caroline County family. Her fiance Ferdinand, an attorney was also from a prominent family, his grandfather, a veteran of the Civil War and a loved and respected member of the Caroline Bar. His father was president of Mary Washington College. Their wedding according to the announcement in “The Times,” was the social event of the season and was described as “fashionable and beautiful” in the presence of a large gathering of friends and relatives. Both parties were described as “highly connected.” But tragically on December 31st, 1907, Ferdinand would die of pneumonia after just five years of marriage, leaving Mattye with two very small children.

Just a few years after the turn of century, it was still not appropriate for a young widow to live alone and Mattye and John, age 4 and Elizabeth, age 3 left the house on Milford Street to live with her father. In 1912, three weeks short of her 8th birthday, her little girl Elizabeth died, succumbing to heart failure. Mattye remarried Bertram Woofolk in 1914 and spent the remainder of her life in Alexandria. Tragedy followed her there when her son John, 21 was killed in an automobile accident. Although there were no more children, Mattye and Bertram were married for fifty years until his death in 1965. Mattye died in at the ripe old age of 94. She is buried in Lakewood commentary. End of story? Not quite.

Mary and Ken

Many people say they know immediately a house is “theirs,” but for newlyweds Mary and Ken Barnett living out their own real life love story, finding the Victorian house on the corner of Milford and Martin Street in Bowling Green was much more than that. The feeling of coming home was so strong, Ken tried to buy the house on the street before they had ever been inside. “We just knew,” they said, “although we had looked at probably 50 properties.” They made an offer to longtime owners, Mayor Frank Benser and his wife Sharon and the Barnetts moved in on May 31, 2002. There was something else Mary felt right from the start. She was by no means alone. The feeling was not in any way frightening or negative but she knew there was a presence, a feminine presence.
Many little things began to happen right from the start such as the movement of small objects, the distinct sound of soft steps on the stair and the deliberate opening and closing of a door. Mary found herself on more than one occasion locked out of the back door while Ken had no trouble at all. More acutely attuned to the presence than perhaps Mary herself were the cats, Beggar and Bozo. Beggar sitting on the stair would draw himself up and move over and sometimes roll over on his back for the unseen presence to rub his tummy. Even more intriguing were voices or murmurings that sounded far away yet close at the same time as if the upstairs were full of people conversing. Mary and Ken set out to discover the stories of the previous owners of the home in hopes of finding who she might be.

The Journey

The quest for insight into the families who lived in the home since the first mention of the house in the tax records of 1902 was an all encompassing one. They contacted local historians who lead them to surviving family members still living in town. The search for the earliest family associated with the house produced very little but the name of the couple, Ferdinand and Mattye and some information about their relatives, the Collins and the Chandlers. The search for more recent information was fairly successful. Audrey Torrence, whose maiden name was Borkey was instrumental in providing information to the Barnett’s as the Borkey family had made the residence home from 1912 to the 1930s. They were the first real family to occupy the house since the Chandler’s left in 1907.

In the 1930’s the house was sold to the Martin family, then the Durrettes, the Bensers and finally to Ken and Mary. Although there was a great deal of information starting with the Borkey family on, there was almost nothing on the young family who had so briefly occupied it at the turn of the century. In the meantime, Ken and Mary had been living in the house for almost two years when their unseen resident decided to take matters into her own hands. The Barnett’s use what would have been a sitting room as their bedroom today. It was a weekend night and about two o’clock in the morning when Bozo the cat awakened Mary by suddenly sitting up. Light from the streetlamp streamed in the window and on the other side of the bed just beyond her sleeping husband, Mary could see the figure of a woman from the side, dressed in a high collar black dress. The detail was so solid and so exact Mary could see the texture of the dress and even movement as she saw the figure was in the process of putting on a short black cape. The woman was in motion walking toward the bathroom door at the back of the house. Far from being afraid, the experience only heightened the desire for the Barnett’s to know the story of the lady who lived in the house. Mary was convinced the lady was Mattye and longed for even one picture and said to Ken about the bedroom where the lady had appeared, “When we find Mattye we will put her in there.”

Mattye Comes Home

In the ensuing months, Ken and Mary contacted local historian Herb Collins whose family was related to Mattye. An old Christmas card in his collection lead to a member of the family, an elderly niece of Mattye’s still alive and living in Northern Virginia. Although “Miss Betsy” did not know the Barnett’s, she agreed to see them.  Herb, Mary, Ken and family friend, Kathy McVay went to her home in Alexandria. Miss Betsy began to talk about her aunt with great affection and filled in some of the missing pieces of the life of Mattye Chandler, details of the life Mary Barnett had been yearning to discover. According to her niece, Mattye remained until the end of her days a gracious and giving lady, never betraying the sadness of her early life. However Miss Betsy also revealed that Ferdinand had been the “love of Mattye’s life.” Then Miss Betsy brought out the pictures and there before Mary lay the image of the woman in her bedroom, the woman in the black mourning dress. To some at first glance it might appear to be a sad, severe picture, an unsmiling woman in black, standing stiff and upright with her children on either side of her. The weight of grief is outlined in every feature of this face. Place pictures from happier times along side and the comparison is striking except for the same dark, intense eyes. It is this picture however that certainly tells Mattye’s story. Miss Betsy generously offered the Barnett’s copies of the pictures of her aunt and Ken had them enlarged and done in portrait style to hang in the house. Above the mantle in the library, Mattye resides now, a picture with head placed slightly to the side, beautiful and serene in a place of honor in the home where in life she was the lady of the house. The other larger portrait has been moved several times, but now has a permanent home in the bedroom where Mattye first appeared to Mary and where she was meant to be.. Mattye has been much quieter now since the pictures have come home and are in their proper place. Mary knows that Mattye wanted her to search, that “she was looking for me to look for her.” “The portraits are like a mirror, I can see who she is.”

From the author
Over the past several years I have had some brief conversations with the Barnett’s about the presence of the woman in their house and their diligent search for information on previous owners. However I was totally unprepared for what happened to me when I visited there to do this story. I certainly went with an open mind, having had things happen to me in my own life which cannot be easily explained and having experienced tremendous loss, the death of one close family member after another in the past ten years. I do believe there is much we do not understand about death, dying and the other side.

However a spirit in ones house, especially a house which is so loved by its living inhabitants is such a personal thing. I did not expect anything really but to simply record what was being told to me. In my mind, if Mattye was there she belonged to Mary, an intimate relationship, I did not expect to be included in. The house is truly so lovely, its hard to take everything in at once and is indeed like stepping through time. But not at all like a museum. Here, every corner, nook and cranny of the home spells rich color, warmth and love. We started our visit in the large entrance hall and moved into the bedroom where the mourning portrait of Mattye and her children stands in a corner on an easel. I knew a few things already, that her husband had died very suddenly, very young and they had only been married a few years. I knew this was the room Mattye had been seen in, putting on her cape and walking toward what would have been the back door of the home in her time.
As we talked, Mary and Ken stood on either side of me and in the middle of my field of vision, just a few feet away was the portrait of Mattye. Suddenly, although I was trying to concentrate on our conversation, I was completely riveted to the figure of Mattye standing in between her two children in the picture. As hard as I tried, I could not take my eyes from the face and eyes of the woman in the portrait and just as suddenly I knew that Mattye was there and why she was there. I tried to concentrate on the conversation at hand and focus on what we were talking about, but to no avail. The force of the personality captured me and held me fast, not in the least frightening or negative but like a weight that wouldn’t’ let go and I found myself saying out loud to Mary and Ken things I certainly had no way of knowing. On the very day the picture was made in 1907, Mattye, as young as she was decided beyond any doubt that her happiest days lay behind her and her heart would always be in this house. She left the house after the death of her first husband but always intended to return one way or another. In just a few years she would lose a child living in her father’s house and later a child in the house she shared with her second husband, but this house was the house of her perfect happiness and here is where she would always be. She lived on to be a very old woman but the house lived on too, in a sweet, private place in her heart.

Some people would say I experienced a haunting, but it was not a haunting so much as a comforting message and one I am privileged to say has been sent to me before. The message is this. Real love is indestructible accepts no boundaries and transcends even death. I think in today’s world, we identify this as just words, words we hear on television and at funerals. We hear this so often, we become deaf and blind to the fact that our love for one another really is this strong and powerful. I think we forget to use it as we should when we are alive. I know that despite incredible odds and circumstances both my grandmother and mother reached out across whatever it is that separates us from this world and the next to let me know we are still connected by love as surely as the sun rises in the sky every morning. So I was certainly a believer of sorts when I visited the Barnetts and now have no doubt that there are indeed two sweet and gentle sprits living here as “ladies of the house.” I also agree with Mary that Mattye’s story is not over, that there is more to discover and so I too await the next chapter.








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