B Is for Belle, Who Fell Down the Well
(Title in honor of Edward Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies, 1963.)
Cumberland's 1894 courthouse.
On
their enjoyable 21st-century ghost tours of Cumberland, Keith
and Annie Potts stand on the Washington Street sidewalk, in the shadow of the 1894 courthouse, and tell a poignant story with roots almost 200 years old. According
to the notes I jotted in the darkness one Saturday night, it goes something like this:
Many years ago, a 5-year-old girl, Belle, while playing with her doll, fell down the well here -- but survived, only to die a year later in a carriage accident. The well long ago was filled in by construction, but could her doll still be down there? Some have reported seeing a phantom little girl sitting on the curb outside the courthouse, crying for her doll ...
The child's fall was recalled 54 years later in Will Lowdermilk's classic History of Cumberland*:
A remarkable accident occurred in the summer of 1824, the result of which was little less than miraculous.
At the time of the building of the Jail and Court House, about the beginning of the century, the want of good drinking water led the Commissioners to determine upon sinking a well. Accordingly, in 1805, they appropriated the sum of £200 for that purpose, and Upton Bruce and Roger Perry were appointed a commission to have the work done.
They selected a spot just in front of the Court House yard, on Prospect street, and sunk a well ninety feet in depth, which was walled up with stone, and furnished with a large wheel and two buckets. The water obtained was excellent.
At the time above indicated [that is, summer 1824], Belle McMahon, a little daughter of William McMahon, about five years of age, was playing about the mouth of the well, when suddenly she lost her balance and fell headlong into it.
A number of persons at once ran to the spot. The light clothing of the child could be seen on the surface of the water, but every one was convinced that she must have been instantly killed.
Her mother, frantic with grief, could with difficulty be restrained from plunging in after her child.
Dr. S.P. Smith was amongst the first to come to the rescue. He procured from the jail a long rope, with grappling hooks, which was used for recovering the buckets when they were lost, and with this he caught the little girl, and drew her to the surface.
She was apparently lifeless, but the prompt use of restoratives soon brought her to consciousness, and it was then discovered that she had sustained no injuries whatever, beyond a slight abrasion of the skin on the forehead.
The diameter of the well is not greater than four feet, and she must have fallen like a plummet to have escaped being dashed to pieces against the rocky sides, in her fearful descent.
This well was covered over and converted into a pit for draining the
Academy, in 1876. (Lowdermilk 307-309)
Here is the historical basis for today's ghost story, minus the heart-tugging bit about the fatal carriage accident, which presumably prevented Belle ever from growing up. This detail plays to the popular superstition that when one's "time comes," no amount of rescue can stave off death for long. (This is the theme of the Final Destination horror franchise, which is probably ripe for a reboot.) It also avoids the need to explain why an adult Belle would revert to childhood in the afterlife.
Note that the child is named, and the child's father is named, but the child's mother, though "frantic with grief," is unnamed. Lowdermilk, a man of 1878, probably considered her as good as named -- she was Mrs. William McMahon, after all!
The courthouse that existed when Belle fell down the well was the county's original courthouse, which was replaced before the Civil War. The second courthouse burned to the ground in 1893; the current edifice is the third on the site, and the grandest.
Two suggestions: One, could engineers, using electronic sensors, locate the exact spot of Belle's long-buried well? Two, someone should organize an on-site re-enactment of Belle's rescue for its bicentennial year, 2024, as a benefit for Child Protective Services or the Family Crisis Resource Center. No, don't look at me; I'm a researcher, not an organizer; I'm an idea man.
*For the sake of online readability, I have broken Lowdermilk's single long paragraph, which spans three pages, into shorter ones, but have left his text otherwise unchanged.
Sources:
"Allegany County Courthouse." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegany_County_Courthouse. Accessed 24 Sept. 2021.
Reed, Roger G. "Allegany County Courthouse." SAH Archipedia, published by the Society of Architectural Historians.https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MD-01-001-0131. Accessed 24 Sept. 2021.
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