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While doing my tombstone tours of Laurel Hill Cemetery in Thomasville, one of my favorite sites to talk about is the Arnold-Swan Mausoleum. As one of the few crypts of this size in the cemetery, it’s hard to miss. Not only does its mere appearance inspire curiosity, but it also brings up ghost stories from locals! I’ve heard tales from many people – students who cut through the cemetery after school, groundskeepers doing the mowing, curious passersby, and people passing down a story they were told as children – all about hearing piano music coming from the crypt. There is no piano in the crypt. So how did this story get started? Do ghosts even play piano? Let’s investigate this ghostly tale and see if we can trace the story of the mysterious piano music of the Arnold-Swan Mausoleum.

I would like to offer one reminder before we begin: it is illegal to trespass on private property, including locked mausoleums. The dead have legal protections against tampering to avoid grave desecration. While I highly encourage you to visit the local cemeteries and view their solemn beauty, especially the Arnold-Swan Mausoleum, please remember to be respectful and courteous of the sites you visit so we may preserve them out of respect for the dead and as preservation for future generations. With that said, let’s (figuratively) dig into this story! Hang in there – it’s a bit long.

There are three burials in this mausoleum, each one a woman whose life was affected by extraordinary circumstances. Their names are Mary Angeline Fambro (1850-1937), Ella Milton Fambro Arnold (1855-1943), and Maynita Arnold Swan (1879-1910). Mary and Ella were born in North Georgia on the cusp of the Civil War. Their parents died while the girls were still young, and they were sent to live on the family plantation with their wealthy grandfather. On the plantation, the girls learned to play piano and sing, a highly desirable talent for ladies of their social status. After the War, Grandpa lost much of his wealth and land and the girls lost their luxurious lifestyle.

Remember Scarlett O’Hara’s famous line about “As God is my witness, I’ll never go hungry again”? That might as well have been said by Mary. When she was old enough, she did the unthinkable: she became an actress! Like all good actresses, she assumed a stage name. As Miss Nellie Firmin, she tread the boards of the Bella Union Theater in San Francisco. Don’t get the wrong idea though: this was not Broadway and Mary was no Angelina Jolie, despite her formal piano training. This was a theater for men only with the type of shows you don’t write home about. This was not the place where stars were made, but it was a good place to find a rich man who might love to share some of his money with you, and that’s what Mary found.

Her rich man was named Thomas Henry Blythe, and he was almost 30 years her senior. Thomas was an English immigrant who made his fortune in San Francisco playing the real estate game. As Nellie, Mary lived with Thomas from 1873 until 1879. He named two of his mines after her. But the relationship soured. Thomas claimed Mary was a little too money hungry, so much so he feared for his life around her. One story claimed she attempted to stab him at the supper table but was thwarted when he pulled out a pistol. Whatever the case may be, they separated after six years together, and Mary signed an agreement stating she was not owed anything by Thomas or his estate. It was time for her to move on.

And where better to move onto than Australia? While living in Australia she met a new man: a sickly fellow named William Jauncey Cruger, heir to a vast family fortune in New York. Using her acting skills, she played nurse to William and quickly convinced him to put a ring on it. They traveled through Europe on their honeymoon which almost ended with their divorce. According to her new sister-in-law, (who totally wasn’t jealous at all) Mary was known to throw wild parties with all sorts of men and smoking and alcohol and even managed to throw a chandelier out a window. But she straightened up her act when divorce was threatened. Besides, she had something new to think about: her former lover, Thomas Henry Blythe, died unexpectedly with no will and millions of dollars in limbo.

Mary and her new husband went home to New York where she attempted to make her claim on the Blythe fortune, saying she had been Thomas Blythe’s common-law wife and was therefore the sole heir. She might have gotten away with it too, but that pesky paper she signed quitting all claims to him came up in evidence. Plus, her new husband was rather embarrassed to have his name dragged through the newspapers like this and promised her his own fortune was worth much more.

And he was right. He was from the wealthy Cruger family who had owned much of the property that now makes up New York City. They had been there for generations, but William was one of the last of the line. When he died in 1900, Mary inherited a 2-million-dollar fortune along with land all over New York – including a little part that we now call Rockefeller Center. Her home at the Cruger Mansion became the site of the first Metropolitan Museum.

As a wealthy widow, she could spend her money on the people she really loved: her family. She had worked hard for years funding their lives so they could be respectable and comfortable. Under her financial stewardship, Emma had married and had children, including the earlier named Maynita. It seems she was the daughter Mary could never have. Maynita was a gifted piano player who graduated from college with a degree in music and went on to teach piano at women’s colleges across the East Coast.

Unfortunately, the beautiful and gifted Maynita was also sickly. In 1906, she and Emma came to Thomasville in the hopes of improving Maynita’s Tuberculosis-damaged lungs. While her health improved a little, Maynita met John Hamilton Swan, a farmer from Jefferson County, Georgia. They were married in 1908, but the good times didn’t last long. Just shy of their second anniversary, Maynita succumbed to her illness. As the heiress to her aunt’s fortune, the family built a mausoleum for Maynita where local legend says the family installed a piano so visitors could play. Ella and Mary spent the rest of their lives traveling the world and, in Mary’s case, playing piano concerts (mostly for the living).

So how true is this part about the piano? Legally we cannot open the doors to the crypt to check without permission from the family. However, the story is definitely plausible. The crypt itself is large enough that at the time of Maynita’s internment there would have been plenty of room for an upright piano to fit in there. However, following the death and internment of Mary in 1937, any piano or crypt furniture would have been rearranged or removed to make room for a second coffin. That means any stories about a living person playing piano in the crypt, would have taken place between 1910 and 1937. In 1943, Ella died, and her coffin was also interred in the crypt. Unless any of Maynita’s brother’s descendants have visited since that time, the crypt has not been open in 81 years.

Today there is no piano in the crypt. But the story of piano music flowing from the mausoleum persists among the community. It is certainly plausible that at one point passersby were hearing piano music coming from the crypt. But anyone with a first-person memory of that would be in their eighties at the youngest. For the more youthful members of our community who have heard the music, it may be the memory of the story mixed with a strong imagination. Or it just may be…

As I close, I’d like to leave us with a poem written by Mary (who was a bit of a Renaissance Woman, as you may have realized by now). This poem appeared in the Tampa Tribune in 1912, perhaps as a response to Maynita’s short life.

Life

A smile, a tear;

A cry, a fear;

Success, a gain;

A hope, a loss;

Deceit, a cross;

A dream, a wave;

A sigh, a grave;

And what?