JOHN BELL HOOD & THE CURSE OF ANNE MITCHELL
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JOHN
BELL HOOD & THE CURSE OF ANNE MITCHELL
This Kentucky Legend has become one of
the most enduring tales of the Civil War — is it truth or merely
folklore?
The ghost of Anne
Mitchell is still said to appear around the old Hood homestead in
Kentucky. She and her lover once walked in the garden here — and her
ghost still does.
The state of Kentucky was a place of great tragedy during
the Civil War but not all of the ironic, mysterious or heart-breaking tales
were the result of battle, imprisonment or disaster. One of the most forgotten
tales of the war speaks of lost love, a dying womans final curse and one of
the famed generals of the Confederacy.
Near Mount Sterling, Kentucky, there once lived a young
woman named Anne Mitchell. She was a dark-haired girl of great beauty who many
people called “the belle of Central Kentucky”. Anne was known throughout the
region as a gentle and sweet girl and as she grew older, she had her choice of
suitors from around the area. However, in her late teens, she fell in love
with just one of her gentleman callers, a tall, blond youth named John Bell
Hood.
Hood was the son of Dr. John W. Hood, who lived near the
Mitchell home and who operated a small farm and a medical school for aspiring
doctors. The younger Hood went to West Point in 1849 and when he returned home
on furlough, he began courting Anne Mitchell. The two of them fell
passionately in love. They often met for walks in the evening and their
favorite trysting place was in the garden of the Hood home — a place where
Annes ghost is still said to walk today.
General John Bell Hood
According to the legends, another young
man came on the scene as a rival for Annes affections. He is remembered
today as only “Mr. Anderson”, and although Anne did not care for him, her
family took to him immediately. Unlike Hood, Anderson was very wealthy and
promised Annes parents that he would build her a home on property which
adjoined their own.
Annes family began to pressure her
incessantly and finally, she agreed to marry Anderson on the condition
that she be able to write a letter to John Hood at West Point — a letter
that would be read only by him. In her letter, Anne poured out her heart
to the young cadet and promised him that she “would love him forever” and
“whether in this world or the next, she would only walk the garden path
with him”.
Not surprisingly, when Hood received the letter, he
immediately left school and rode for Kentucky. He managed to get Anne a
message and promised to meet her a few nights later near her home. He promised
to have an extra horse saddled for her and together, they would ride off and
be married. As it happened though, one of the Mitchell slaves discovered
Annes absence only minutes after she left for her rendezvous with Hood and
raised the alarm. Annes father and brothers went in pursuit of her and
discovered the young lovers just as Hood was putting Anne on her horse. She
was quickly returned home and was locked in her room and not allowed to leave
until the day that she married Anderson. Confined to her room, Anne could only
peer out the window of the house at the Hood homestead and at the garden where
she and Hood had once walked. She never stopped loving him — and she never
forgot the lifelong punishment that she felt her family had inflicted upon
her.
A few months passed and Annes family, as well as her new
husband, breathed a sigh of relief when Anne and Anderson finally exchanged
their wedding vows. Little did they know however , their troubles were just
beginning. Despite the affection and wealth that was heaped upon her, Anne
refused to forgive the fact that she had been forced to marry a man she did
not love. She refused to leave her room in the old Mitchell house and remained
moody and depressed. When she learned that she was pregnant, she stopped
speaking altogether and even Anderson himself was banned from entering her
rooms.
When she finally spoke again, it was after the birth of her
son, Corwin, and what she uttered made everyones heart stand still. Her words
were a curse…. “upon all who had any part in making me marry Anderson when
my heart will always belong to John Bell Hood.” As the legend goes, the curse
began to have a dire effect on the family just a few hours after Corwin was
born.
Late that afternoon, the sky overhead began to darken and a
strangely localized thunderstorm swept through the area. A lightning bolt
struck the corner of the Mitchell house and a portion of the brick home
collapsed. Although nothing else in the area was damaged, three people at the
Mitchell house were killed — including Anne herself. Also dead were one of
Annes brothers, who had been involved in stopping Anne and Hood from eloping,
and the slave girl whose warning had sent the Mitchell men in pursuit of Anne
when she ran away.
After three persons died within hours of Anne uttering a
curse on the family, the story of the curse soon began to spread. In the years
that followed, it began to be taken quite seriously. People from all over the
region told and re-told the story of Annes last moments on earth and the
malediction that she uttered just hours before her death. And they watched in
fear as the warning in the curse began to come to pass.
Annes son, Corwin Anderson, died from the shock of
witnessing a fatal assault on his youngest son by his oldest. The elder son,
named English Anderson, was a brutal man and had narrowly escaped conviction
after murdering a cook who worked for his family. In this instance, he knocked
his brother from a horse with a brick. Corwin staggered to his bedroom and
died of a heart attack and the youngest son perished from his injuries a short
time later.
English Anderson did not fare well either. Soon after the
deaths of his father and brother, he killed a man in a knife fight, then beat
to death a young boy who was working on his farm. In revenge, a group of other
farm workers actually stoned him to death.
The family continued to be plagued with strange and violent
deaths as the years passed and descendants believed them to be the results of
the curse. As recently as the 1940s, Annes great-grandson, Judson Anderson,
inexplicably walked into a pond on his farm, drew a gun and shot himself in
the head.
The various residents of the Hood homestead, who moved in
after the Hood family left, had little luck either. One owner committed
suicide and another attempted to take his own life after an unhappy love
affair. In the local area, both events were attributed to Annes influence.
Although her curse was certainly a malevolent one — her
lingering ghost is considered to be a better reflection of her truly gentle
soul. Many locals spoke of seeing her wandering the gardens of the old Hood
home and she was never believed to have frightened anyone, despite some
reported encounters with shaken residents of the property. Her haunting has
always been a quiet one and if the stories are to be believed, it remains so
today.
With all of the victims of Annes fatal curse, one has to
wonder what became of John Bell Hood after their separation. Some believe that
her restless spirit may have inadvertently passed the effects of the curse on
to him, despite how much she loved him, because Hoods career was forever
shadowed by failure and tragedy.
After his departure from Kentucky, Hood did his best to
forget about Anne Mitchell, although he remained a bachelor for many years
afterward. He became a young military officer on the Texas frontier under the
command of Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee. After the outbreak of the war,
Hood followed Lee into service for the Confederacy, becoming a commander in
the Texas Brigade, an outfit considered to be one of the toughest in the
southern army. Hoods career began to flourish and he earned a sterling
reputation as a leader, always pushing his troops forward in person. At
Gettysburg, he lost the use of one arm and later had a leg amputated after
leading his corps into battle at Chickamauga.
At the age of 33, with only half his limbs, Hood rose to
the rank of full general and was placed in command of the western army. He was
now at the peak of his career — and his decline began soon after.
He had taken over the defense of Atlanta, with Sherman was
approaching, but was driven out after a series of intense battles. In the
Winter campaign of 1864, his Army of Tennessee was virtually annihilated at
the battle of Nashville and it became known as the worst defeat suffered by a
Confederate general. From that point until the end of the war, he was in
disgrace, a general with no command.
After the war, Hood settled in New Orleans, became a cotton
broker, married a local woman and fathered 10 children over the next 12 years,
including three sets of twins. It was not long though before his commission
business went bankrupt and he lost everything. Then, during the yellow fever
epidemic of 1879, he and his wife both died, leaving his children as orphans
who were scattered from Mississippi to New York.
And finally, whatever happened to Anderson, Hoods rival
for the hand of Anne Mitchell?
At the outbreak of the war, with his wife dead, he enlisted
in a Texas regiment. A few months later, that brigade was placed in command of
none other than General John Bell Hood. What happened to him next is anyones
guess. So far as any records go, Anderson simply appeared to vanish from the
earth.
© Copyright 2003 Troy Taylor. All Rights Reserved.
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