The year was 1841 when the first strange occurrences were noted at Forsythe estate just 3 miles east of Savannah’s historic district. The plantation stood as a monument to southern prosperity, its white columns rising like sentinels against the Georgian sky. But beneath the grand facade and behind the carefully maintained gardens, a darkness had taken root that would not be discovered until many years later.
Elellanena Bowmont arrived at Foresight Estate in the winter of 1835, acquired through a transaction that was recorded in the county ledger with nothing more than a line of cursive and a sum. According to parish records, she was 22 years of age at the time. The documentation described her as possessing exceptional domestic skills, though several witnesses would later claim these qualities were not the reason for her purchase.
Thomas Harrington, the 46-year-old master of Foresight Estate, had recently lost his wife to consumption. Sources suggest he had been seen inspecting newly arrived individuals at the market for several weeks before selecting Elellanena. The property’s caretaker journal discovered during renovations in 1958 contains a curious entry dated January 12th, 1835.
New arrival today. Master seems unusually attentive to her quarters. requested the room adjacent to the kitchen be prepared with particular care, unusual for January. In the beginning, Elellanena’s presence at Foresight Estate appeared unremarkable to outside observers. She performed her duties alongside approximately 30 other enslaved individuals who maintained the Cotton Plantation and Manor House.
What made her situation different, according to household records and later testimonies, was her rapid elevation to a position within the main house, specifically assigned to direct service to Thomas Harrington. By autumn of 1836, Elellanena’s status had changed significantly. The estate’s expense ledgers preserved in the Savannah Historical Society archives show unusual purchases.
Fabric of higher quality than would be typical for enslaved persons, a pair of leather shoes, and remarkably a small silver locket. The receipt for this last item was found tucked into Thomas Harrington’s personal Bible discovered in a trunk in the estate’s attic in 1962. Maria Wilson, who served as a cook at the neighboring Wilks plantation, provided testimony to her grandson that was recorded in a 1948 oral history project.
According to this account, everyone who worked the big houses knew what was happening at Foresight. The master had taken a fancy to the Bowmont woman. She wasn’t treated like the others. She took meals in the house, wore finer clothes, but there was something in her eyes that wasn’t right. Like she was there but not there. In the spring of 1837, Elellanena Bowmont became visibly with child.
No announcement was made, but estate records show she was relieved of certain duties. The plantation physician, Dr. Samuel Thorne, began making more frequent visits to the estate. His log book, discovered among his effects after his death in 1872, contains cryptic entries regarding the delicate condition at Foresight and prescriptions for tonics to settle the female constitution.
On November 18th, 1837, Elellanena gave birth to a girl. The child was not entered into the official property ledger of Foresight Estate, an unusual emission that researchers would later flag as the first of many irregularities surrounding the Bowmont children. Instead, a small notation appears in Thomas Harrington’s personal journal.
Providence has blessed the house with new life today. I have named her Caroline after my mother. She has her eyes. For the next several months, life at Foresight estate continued with a semblance of normaly. Eleanor and her infant daughter occupied the room near the kitchen which had been expanded to accommodate them.
According to household inventory records, the room contained items unusual for enslaved quarters. A rocking chair, a copper bathing tub, and a small wooden cradle with linens. Then came the first tragedy. In July of 1838, infant Caroline fell ill with fever. Dr. Thorne was summoned, but his treatments proved ineffective.
The child passed away on July 23rd, aged 8 months. No death certificate was filed with local authorities, which was not uncommon for enslaved individuals. However, something quite uncommon did occur. Caroline was not buried in the unmarked area beyond the North Field, where other enslaved persons were laid to rest.
Instead, Thomas Harrington ordered a small grave to be dug beneath an oak tree at the eastern edge of the garden. Elellanena’s reaction to her daughter’s death was not recorded in any official capacity. However, Mary Stillwell, the wife of a merchant who visited Foresight Estate regularly, wrote in a letter to her sister in Charleston, “I encountered the most disturbing scene today at Foresight.
The young colored woman who serves in the house was kneeling at a small fresh grave in the garden, completely still, making no sound. Mr. Harrington watched from the verander, but made no move to interrupt her vigil. When she finally rose, her face was entirely devoid of expression. I have never witnessed such contained grief, and it chilled me to my core.
By winter of 1838, Elellanena was with child again. This pregnancy proceeded without complication, and on May 3rd, 1839, she delivered a son. Thomas Harrington named him James after his own father. Estate records from this period show increased expenditures for the room by the kitchen, a larger bed, additional linens, and notably a lock installed on the door.
James appeared to thrive initially. Household accounts mentioned the infant’s robust appetite and strong lungs. For nearly 10 months, there were no indications of trouble. Then, in March of 1840, tragedy struck again. James developed a respiratory affliction that quickly worsened. Despite Dr. Thorne’s attentions, the child passed away on March 15th.
Once again, Thomas Harrington ordered a burial beneath the oak tree in the garden beside Caroline’s grave. No marker was placed, but estate gardener records note that Elellanena planted white roses at the site. What happened in the aftermath of James’ death would later become a matter of significant speculation among historians and local chronicers.
The estates ledgers show that Thomas Harrington left for a business trip to Atlanta 3 days after the burial. During his two week absence, something occurred that was never explicitly documented. Upon his return, Thomas wrote in his journal, “Returned to find matters at home in disarray, e confined to her quarters. Mrs.
Potter reports extreme melancholy and refusal of food. Dr. Thorne consulted and has prescribed Lordam for nerves. Situation requires careful management.” Mrs. Potter, the housekeeper, left no personal accounts of this period. However, laundry records indicate an unusual increase in linens from Eleanor’s quarters, and the kitchen ledger shows meals being delivered rather than Eleanor coming to collect them, as had been her custom.
By summer of 1840, Eleanor had recovered sufficiently to resume some duties within the house. Then, in September, she was once again with child. This third pregnancy coincided with a noticeable change in Thomas Harrington’s behavior. According to business associates who visited the estate, Frederick Montro, a cotton broker from Savannah, noted in his commercial diary, “Harrington seems possessed by unusual agitation, twice interrupted our meeting to check on matters in the house, inquired [clears throat] about physicians in Charleston, who might be
more skilled than local practitioners. His concern for domestic matters is interfering with his judgment in business affairs. As Elellanena’s pregnancy progressed, Thomas Harrington made arrangements that deviated significantly from plantation norms. He converted a small sitting room adjacent to his own bedroom into a birthing chamber and hired a midwife from Savannah, Mrs.
Sarah Blackwood, to reside at the estate for the final month of the pregnancy. Mrs. Blackwood’s presence was documented in estate payroll records, but she left no personal account of her time at Foresight. The only reference to her observations comes from a conversation recounted years later by her daughter to a church archavist.
mother would never speak directly about her time at Foresight Estate, except to say once that she had never seen a woman so silent in her suffering, nor a man so desperate in his hope. On April 10th, 1841, Elellanena gave birth to her third child, another girl, Thomas named her Elizabeth.
And like with the previous births, Thomas Harrington immediately had Reverend William Stokes from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Savannah come to the estate to perform a private baptism. This highly unusual event was recorded in the church register with no mother’s name listed, only Elizabeth Harrington, daughter of Thomas Harrington, baptized at Foresight Estate, April 11th, 1841.
For the first time, Thomas Harrington’s journals contain daily observations of one of Eleanor’s children. Elizabeth’s first smile, the color of her eyes, noted as changing from blue to brown like her mother’s, her apparent recognition of his voice. He commissioned a portrait of the infant from a Savannah artist, which was discovered in the attic storage of Forsythe estate in 1959.
The canvas partially damaged by moisture. Then in August of 1841, Elizabeth began showing signs of illness. Dr. Thorne was summoned immediately and this time Thomas Harrington also called for a physician from Charleston, Dr. Marcus Whitfield, known for his expertise in childhood diseases.
The combined efforts of both doctors proved futile. Elizabeth died on August 17th, aged just 4 months. The estate records show that Thomas Harrington spent an extraordinary sum on a small marble headstone, the first formal marker for any of the children. The stone, later discovered broken and weathered during an archaeological survey in 1965, bore only the name Elizabeth and dates of birth and death.
What happened in the days following Elizabeth’s death would remain shrouded in conflicting accounts and speculation for over a century. The established facts drawn from estate records are these. On August 20th, 3 days after Elizabeth’s burial, Thomas Harrington left for Savannah on business. He returned unexpectedly the same evening.
The next morning, August 21st, Elellanena Bowmont could not be found anywhere on the estate. A search was organized. The nearby woods and roads were examined. Neighboring plantations were notified. Eleanor had vanished. Thomas Harrington did not contact authorities, which several historians have noted as significant.
Instead, he offered a substantial reward to his overseer if Elellanena was returned discreetly. After 3 days, the search yielded results. Elellanena was found in the abandoned hunting cabin that stood on the furthest edge of Foresight property nearly 4 miles from the main house. According to the overseer’s tur report in the estate log book, located the woman, unharmed but unwell in mind, returned to the house under watch.
What followed was a period of approximately 2 months during which Eleanor was, according to household accounts, confined for her health. The room she had previously occupied was emptied, and she was moved to a room on the third floor of the main house. Estate records show the purchase of a special lock for this door and the boarding up of the room’s window from the outside. Dr.
Thorne visited twice weekly during this period. His medical log contains minimal information. Patient at foresight continues under sedation. Refuses food when lucid. Speaks of children calling to her from beneath the oak. Recommended continued isolation and lordinum as needed. Then on October 12th, 1841, Thomas Harrington’s journal contains a single cryptic entry. It is finished.
May God have mercy on us all. The following day, housekeeping records note the third floor room was emptied and cleaned. No further mention of Elellanena Bowmont appears in any estate document. She simply vanished from the written record. What happened to Elellanena Bowmont has been the subject of intense speculation among historians and local chronicers.
The most commonly accepted theory based on fragmentaryary evidence is that she died either by her own hand or from the effects of her treatment and was buried in an unmarked location on the estate grounds. However, no remains that could be definitively identified as hers were ever discovered in subsequent excavations. Thomas Harrington never remarried.
His behavior in the years following 1841 grew increasingly erratic. Business associates noted his declining interest in the plantation’s operations. He began spending extended periods in Savannah and eventually Charleston, leaving Foresight Estate under the management of his cousin Walter Harrington. The estate’s productivity declined steadily.
By 1847, Thomas Harrington’s financial records show mounting debts. In 1850, he sold approximately half of the enslaved individuals owned by the estate. By 1855, Foresight Estate was operating at a loss. Thomas Harrington died in 1858 at the age of 69. According to his will, Foresight Estate passed to his cousin Walter’s son, James Harrington.
The will contained one unusual stipulation. The oak tree in the eastern garden was never to be cut down, and the area surrounding it was to remain undisturbed. James Harrington had little interest in maintaining the declining plantation. After the Civil War and emancipation, the estate fell into complete disrepair. In 1872, the property was sold to a lumber company.
Despite the stipulation in Thomas Harrington’s will, the oak tree was cut down and the garden area was cleared for development. According to local newspaper accounts, the workers who removed the tree made a disturbing discovery. Beneath its roots, they found four small sets of remains, not three as the known graves would have suggested.
The additional set was of an infant, approximately newborn in size, with no evidence of a burial container. This discovery might have remained a mere curiosity had it not coincided with the death of Dr. Samuel Thorne, who had been the physician at Foresight Estate. Among his personal papers was a sealed envelope marked Forsythe estate confidential.
Inside was a single sheet containing an account dated October 11th, 1841. Called to foresight under most disturbing circumstances. Th reports EB delivered of stillborn male infant during night. No midwife present. Child already wrapped and prepared for burial when I arrived. Mother in extremely weakened condition, both physically and in mind.
evidence of significant [clears throat] blood loss. Advised immediate removal to hospital in Savannah, but th refused, insisting on home treatment. Against my better judgment, I have acquiesced to his wishes. I fear the outcome is predetermined. I record this account to clear my conscience. Though I pray it never becomes necessary to share it.
The discovery of this document along with the fourth set of remains created a brief sensation in the local press. However, with most of the principles long deceased and the estate itself transforming into an industrial area, interest eventually waned. For nearly a century, the story of Elellanena Bowmont and the children of Foresight Estate faded from public consciousness.
Then in 1963, a graduate student named Margaret Wilson from the University of Georgia began researching unexplained disappearances of enslaved women in antibbellum savannah for her doctoral dissertation. Her research led her to the fragments of the foresight estate records that had been preserved in various archives.
Wilson’s work pieced together the narrative from dispersed sources, estate ledgers, church records, business correspondents, medical logs, personal journals, and oral histories. Her dissertation completed in 1967, but never published, concluded with a theory that would later gain significant traction among historians.
According to Wilson’s analysis, Elellanena Bowmont did not die at Forsythe estate in October of 1841. Instead, after the still birth and secret burial of her fourth child, she was sold through private channels to a plantation owner in Louisiana. Wilson discovered a bill of sale dated October 13th, 1841 for a domestic servant aged 28 in delicate health sold by Thomas Harrington to Jeremiah Wilcox of St.
Francisville, Louisiana. Wilson attempted to trace Elellanena’s life after this transfer, but found the records in Louisiana incomplete due to courthouse fires during the Civil War. Her research trail ended there and her dissertation was filed away in university archives largely unnoticed. In 1968, during the construction of a manufacturing facility on what had once been Forsythe estate land, workers excavating for a foundation discovered a small silver locket buried approximately 6 ft below ground near where the oak
tree had once stood. Inside was a braid of dark hair and a tiny portrait painted on ivory of a woman with features suggesting mixed ancestry. On the back of the portrait, barely legible, were the initials EB. The locket is now housed in the Savannah Historical Society Museum, a small, easily overlooked artifact that represents one of the few tangible connections to Elellanena Bowmont that survived.
The land where Foresight Estate once stood has been completely transformed by industrial and later commercial development. Nothing remains of the plantation house, the gardens, or the oak tree that marked the children’s graves. The only physical reminder is a small historical marker erected in 1992 at the edge of what is now a shopping center parking lot.
The marker makes no mention of Elellanena Bowmont or the children, stating only site of Foresight Estate, circa 1830, 1870, cotton plantation owned by the Harrington family. Yet, according to local accounts, strange occurrences have been reported in the area, particularly in the eastern section of the property where the garden once stood.
Security guards working night shifts have described hearing what sounds like a woman singing softly, though no source can be located. Maintenance workers have reported finding small arrangements of white roses placed on the ground in the early morning hours, though security cameras have never captured anyone leaving them.
Perhaps most disturbing are the reports from three separate night watchmen spanning the years 1975 to 2005 who claimed to have seen a woman in outdated dress walking slowly through the property around 3:00 in the morning, always in mid- August, always heading toward the eastern corner where an oak tree once stood, always vanishing when approached.
These accounts have been dismissed as urban legends, the kind that inevitably attach themselves to locations with troubled histories. Yet they persist, passed down through generations of Savannah residents, a whispered counterpoint to the sanitized history presented on tourist brochures and guided tours. In 1969, Margaret Wilson attempted to return to her research on Elellanena Bowmont, planning to expand her dissertation into a book.
However, she reported increasing difficulty accessing certain archives and collections. In a letter to her academic adviser, she wrote, “I am encountering unexpected resistance from several families connected to the Harrington lineage. Doors that were previously open have been firmly closed. I cannot help but feel that even after more than a century, there are those who prefer this history remain buried.
Wilson abandoned the project after reportedly receiving anonymous communications, suggesting she focus her scholarly attention elsewhere. She accepted a teaching position at a small college in New England and never published her findings. The true fate of Elellanena Bowmont after October 1841 remains unknown.
If she was indeed sold to Louisiana, as Wilson’s research suggested, no clear record of her life or death there has been discovered, she vanishes from documented history, just as completely as she vanished from Foresight Estates records. What we know with certainty is this. Between 1837 and 1841, a young enslaved woman named Elellanena Bowmont bore four children at Foresight Estate.
All four died in infancy or early childhood. All four were buried beneath an oak tree in the garden rather than in the unmarked ground where other enslaved persons were interred. And in the autumn of 1841, Elellanena Bowmont disappeared from Foresight Estate under circumstances that Thomas Harrington went to considerable lengths to obscure.
The rest, her thoughts, her feelings, her suffering, her possible escape or likely death, exists in the shadows of history, in the spaces between documented facts, in the silences that official records maintain. We can approach these shadows, examine their outlines, but we cannot dispel them entirely.
Perhaps that is why her story continues to resonate. Why people still report encounters with an unidentified woman walking across what was once Forsythe estate land. In the absence of justice, in the absence of truth, in the absence of proper mourning, some presences refuse to fade entirely. In 2008, a descendant of the Harrington family donated a collection of family papers to the Savannah Historical Society.
Among them was a water-damaged journal kept by Thomas Harrington’s cousin Walter, who took over management of Foresight Estate in the 1840s. Most entries concerned plantation operations, but one dated April 1842, approximately 6 months after Elellanena Bowmont’s disappearance, contained this passage.
Thomas confided in me today after several brings. I wish he had not. Some knowledge cannot be unknown once shared. He believes the children were taken by divine retribution for his sins. Perhaps that is easier for him to accept than the alternative his physician suggested that they might have been helped to their ends. When I asked by whom, he looked at me with such hollowess and said, “By the one who loved them too much to let them live as she had to live, I will not transcribe the rest of what he said.
” Some words should not be preserved, even in private pages. This journal entry discovered over 160 years after it was written adds yet another layer to the mystery of Elellanena Bowmont and the children of Forsythe estate. It raises questions that can never be fully answered about agency, resistance, and the terrible choices faced by those trapped in an inhuman system.
The graves beneath the oak tree are long gone, the remains likely scattered during excavation for commercial development. The room where Elellanena lived, first by the kitchen and later on the third floor, no longer exists. The locket with her initials sits in a museum display case, occasionally noticed by visitors who have no knowledge of its significance.
Yet something of her story persists, refuses to be completely erased. It echoes in academic papers, in local ghost tours, in the uncomfortable silences that fall when certain aspects of history are confronted directly. And perhaps, if local accounts are to be believed, it walks the ground of what was once foresight estate on August nights, searching for something that was taken or something that was left behind.
For those of us who encounter this history now, separated by nearly two centuries from the events themselves, there remains an obligation to acknowledge what occurred, not just the documented facts, but the human reality they represent. to recognize Elellanena Bowmont not as a footnote in plantation ledgers, but as a woman who lived, suffered, perhaps loved, perhaps fought back in the only ways available to her, and who in life or death eventually disappeared from the written record, but not from memory. In the absence of
justice, remembrance must serve. And so we remember Elellanena Bowmont and the four children buried beneath an oak tree that no longer stands on land that no longer resembles what it once was in a world that has changed and yet in some ways remains unchanged. The sound of their story still echoes for those willing to listen.
In the spring of 1969, just as Margaret Wilson was abandoning her research on Elellanena Bowmont, another discovery was made that would add yet another layer to this troubling history. During renovations of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Savannah, workers discovered a hidden compartment behind the vestry wall. Inside was a small wooden box containing several items, a folded piece of yellowed paper, a small cloth pouch containing what appeared to be dried herbs, and a carved wooden figure of a woman holding a child. The paper, when carefully
unfolded by archavists, revealed itself to be a letter written in an educated but hurried hand. It was dated October 14th, 1841, and addressed simply to Father William. The contents read, “I write in haste and in the greatest distress of conscience. What I have participated in weighs heavily upon my soul.
The woman from Foresight Estate was brought here last night, more dead than alive, by Mr. H himself. He claimed she had attempted self harm following the loss of her infant, and required sanctuy and care beyond what his household could provide.” The truth, as revealed by Dr. Thorne, who arrived shortly after, was far darker. The woman had been kept under lock and key since the still birth.
When sedation was removed, she became, in his words, unmanageable in her grief. He confided that Mr. H feared she might reveal certain truths about the children that had died at Foresight, truths that would prove ruinous to his standing in the community. I was asked to arrange immediate passage for her on the vessel departing for New Orleans this morning.
Mr. H provided papers indicating her sail to a plantation in Louisiana, though I suspect she will never reach that destination in her current condition. She spoke only once during the night. As I sat with her while the doctor administered his preparations for the journey, she looked at me with eyes that seemed to see beyond this world and said, “All four sleep beneath the oak.
” I sang to them as they passed. It was the only kindness I could offer. When I asked if she wanted to confess any sin before her journey, thinking she referred to some act against the children, she smiled in a way that chilled my blood and said, “The sin was not mine, Father. The sin was bringing them into this world, knowing what awaited them.
” I simply opened the door to a better place. I do not know if I have been party to concealing a terrible crime or providing mercy to a woman broken by unimaginable suffering. Perhaps both are true. I will carry this burden to my grave, but I leave this record in hopes that someday someone might know that Elellanena Bowmont was not forgotten in her final hours in Savannah.
I have enclosed her medicine pouch, which she clutched until sedation took her, and the small carving found among her few possessions. May God have mercy on us all for what is done in the name of prosperity and order. In deepest contrition, Reverend James Sullivan, assistant to Reverend William Stokes. This letter, which came to be known as the Sullivan Confession, was initially kept from public view by church authorities who cited its disturbing nature and unverifiable claims.
It wasn’t until 2003 that historian Eliza Montgomery gained access to it while researching clerical responses to slavery in Antabbellum, Savannah. Her subsequent paper, Complicity and Conscience: The Church and Foresight Estate, published in the Southern Historical Review, brought renewed attention to Elellanena Bowmont’s story.
Montgomery’s research also uncovered shipping records from October 15, 1841, listing a female negro infirm among the cargo of the merchant vessel Carolina Star bound for New Orleans. The ship’s log, preserved in the maritime archives, notes that this unnamed passenger died at sea on October 17 and was buried at sea, according to maritime custom.
If this passenger was indeed Elellanena Bowmont, as Montgomery’s research strongly suggests, then her mortal journey ended in the waters of the Atlantic, far from both Foresight Estate and the Louisiana plantation that supposedly purchased her. The wooden carving found with Sullivan’s letter remains in the archives of St.
John’s Church. It depicts a standing woman holding four small bundles in her arms, their features indistinct, but their significance unmistakable. The carving style has been identified by anthropologists as consistent with West African traditions, suggesting that Elellanena maintained cultural connections despite her enslavement.
The herb pouch, when analyzed by botonists in 2005, was found to contain dried fox glove, gyms weed, and ubberries, all plants with toxic properties when prepared in certain ways, all growing on or near foresight estate, according to botanical surveys of the period. These discoveries led Montgomery and subsequent researchers to a theory that contradicts the longheld narrative of Elellanena as merely a victim of Thomas Harrington’s exploitation.
Instead, they propose a more complex understanding that Eleanor, faced with the unbearable reality of watching her children grow up in slavery, possibly made the devastating choice to end their suffering herself. This theory remains controversial and unproven. Some historians argue that the children’s deaths could have been natural as infant mortality was high in that era.
Others suggest that if the deaths were indeed deliberate, the culpability might have rested with Thomas Harrington himself, who might have seen the mixed race children as a growing liability to his social standing. What can be said with certainty is that four children died at Forsythe estate between 1837 and 1841.
Their remains were discovered beneath an oak tree in 1872 and Elellanena Bowmont, their mother, disappeared from Savannah in October 1841, likely dying at sea days later. The question of agency, who acted, who decided, who controlled the narrative, remains central to understanding this history.
In a system designed to strip individuals of all autonomy, what choices remained? What forms might resistance take? How does one measure love against suffering when both are confined within an inhuman system? In 2012, ground penetrating radar was used to survey the former Foresight Estate land, now occupied by a shopping center. The technology revealed a previously unknown feature, a small underground chamber approximately 15 ft below the current surface in the area where the oak tree once stood.
When excavated under the supervision of archaeologists from the University of Georgia, the chamber was found to contain a wooden chest badly deteriorated but still intact. Inside the chest was several items. A child’s knitted cap, four small cloth dolls of different sizes arranged in a row, a handcopied page from a prayer book, and most significantly, a journal bound in faded cloth.
The journal’s pages had largely succumbed to moisture and time, but several passages remained legible. The handwriting matched that on the back of the ivory portrait in the silver locket discovered decades earlier. The journal appears to have belonged to Eleanor Bowmont herself, though how it came to be buried in this underground chamber remains unknown.
The legible entries span from 1838 to 1841 and provide the only known record of Elellanena’s thoughts in her own words. One entry dated July 25th, 1838, 2 days after the death of her first child, reads, “They have put Caroline beneath the oak tree. Master T says it is a mark of special favor not to be with the others beyond the north field.
He does not understand that the ground consumes us all the same, favor or no favor. I sit beside her small mound when duties allow. I have begun to hate the oak for the weight it will place upon her small body as its roots grow. Yet I also find myself touching its bark, feeling its life continue while hers has ended.
Is this what mothers become in this place? Women who speak to trees because their children lie beneath them. Another entry dated March 18th, 1840, shortly after the death of her second child, reads, “James has joined his sister.” The white doctor says his lungs were weak. What he does not say is why. The dampness of our room, the work I did with him strapped to my back until my seventh month, the poor milk my tired body made for him.
These are the true causes, but they are not written in medical books. Master T weeps for him and calls it God’s will. I do not weep anymore. I am learning that tears are a luxury belonging to those who expect the world to be fair. I have no such expectation now. I think instead of my grandmother’s stories of children who return to the other side when this world is too cruel for them to stay, perhaps they are wiser than we who remain.
The most revealing entry dated August 19th, 1841, 2 days after the death of her third child, Elizabeth, consists of just a few lines. The third has returned to the stars. Master T rages against God and fate. he had such hopes for Elizabeth, had her baptized, spoke of special arrangements for her future, perhaps even taking her to the house in Savannah, where lighter complexions raise fewer questions.
But she has escaped such a life as the others did. I look at the one growing inside me now, my fourth and final burden, and I know what I must do. There are kinder doorways to the next world than the ones this place provides. My grandmother taught me how to find them. May she forgive me. May they all forgive me. This final entry, written just 2 days before Elellanena allegedly delivered a stillborn son and subsequently disappeared from Foresight Estate, has been the subject of intense scholarly debate. Some interpret it as evidence
supporting the theory that Elellanena deliberately hastened her children’s deaths as an act of desperate mercy. Others see it as the anguished writings of a grieving mother seeking spiritual understanding of her losses with the doorways referenced being metaphorical rather than literal. What is clear is that Elellanena Bowmont, a woman who left almost no mark in official records beyond her monetary value in transaction ledgers, found ways to record her own truth, preserve her own thoughts, and possibly exercise the only forms of
agency available to her within a system designed to deny her humanity. The underground chamber where the chest was discovered has been interpreted by archaeologists as a root cellar that was later repurposed. How Elellanor’s possessions came to be hidden there and by whom remains unknown. One theory suggests that another enslaved person at Foresight Estate.
Perhaps someone who assisted Eleanor or was entrusted with her belongings concealed them after her disappearance. The discovered items are now preserved in the Savannah Historical Museum’s special collections, though they are not part of the regular exhibit. Researchers must apply for special permission to view them. A policy that has drawn criticism from those who argue that Elellanena Bowmont’s story, however painful, should be fully accessible as an important part of American history.
In 2015, a descendant of Thomas Harrington, Katherine Harrington Wells, established a memorial foundation dedicated to acknowledging and researching the lives of all enslaved individuals who lived at Foresight Estate. The foundation funded the creation of a more comprehensive historical marker at the site, which now includes Elellanena Bowmont’s name and acknowledges the four children buried there.
The foundation also sponsors an annual scholarship for research into the hidden histories of enslaved women and their children with particular focus on forms of resistance and survival that traditional historical records have often overlooked or misinterpreted. We cannot change the past, Harrington Wells stated at the dedication of the new marker.
But we can change how we remember it, how we honor those who suffered, and how we understand their humanity and agency, even within a system designed to deny both. Visitors to the site today will find a small contemplative garden where the oak tree once stood. The garden includes four small stone markers arranged in a semicircle representing the four children who were buried there.
At the center stands a bronze sculpture of a woman with her face turned upward, her arms empty but slightly raised as if releasing something to the sky. The sculptor Amara Johnson described her work as not just a memorial to suffering but a recognition of impossible choices and enduring spirit. Elellanena Bowmont’s story is not simply one of victimhood but of a woman who even within the most constrained circumstances found ways to express love, preserve dignity, and possibly on her own terms resist. Local residents
report that white roses frequently appear at the base of the sculpture left by anonymous visitors. On August nights, particularly around the 17th, the date of Elizabeth’s death, some claim to see a solitary woman walking slowly through the garden, stopping at each of the four stones before disappearing into the darkness.
Science cannot validate such sightings, of course. But perhaps some stories leave impressions that transcend the physical world, echoing across time, not as supernatural phenomena, but as emotional resonances that sensitive individuals perceive in their own way. What remains undeniable is that the story of Elellanena Bowmont and her four children continues to affect those who encounter it.
It raises uncomfortable questions about America’s past, about the human capacity for both cruelty and resistance, about how we memorialize difficult histories, and about whose voices are preserved in the historical record. In the archives, in the buried chest, in the letter hidden behind a church wall, in the silver locket, and in the oral histories passed down through generations, we find fragments of a life that official records tried to reduce to property transactions.
These fragments do not provide a complete picture. Too much has been lost to time. Too much was never recorded in the first place. But they offer glimpses of a woman who lived, suffered, possibly loved, possibly resisted, and who, even in the most dehumanizing of circumstances, maintained an inner life rich enough to leave echoes that resonate nearly two centuries later.
For modern visitors who walk through the memorial garden or researchers who handle the preserved artifacts, the story of Foresight Estate serves as a reminder that history is not just a collection of facts and dates. It is a complex tapestry of human experiences, many of which were deliberately obscured or silenced at the time they occurred.
Recovering these experiences requires not just archival diligence, but imaginative empathy, the willingness to look beyond official records to the lives that existed in the margins. Elellanena Bowmont’s final days remain shrouded in uncertainty. If she did indeed die at sea aboard the Carolina Star, her body committed to the Atlantic waters, then she has no grave that can be visited, no marker that bears her name.
The memorial garden stands in place of such a marker, an acknowledgment of absence as much as presence. Perhaps that is fitting for a woman whose life was defined by systematic erasia, of her autonomy, her familial bonds, her very humanity in the eyes of the law. Yet against these erasers, we can now place the evidence of her resistance, the journal entries that recorded her thoughts, the carved figure that expressed her culture, the herb pouch that suggested her knowledge, and the lasting impact of her story on all who encounter it. In the end, what
happened at Foresight Estate between 1835 and 1841 was both an intimate personal tragedy and a reflection of a larger historical atrocity. Elellanena Bowmont’s story is simultaneously unique in its specific details and tragically common in its broader outlines. Countless other enslaved women lived, bore children, suffered losses, and died, leaving barely a trace in historical records.
What makes Elellanena’s story different is not necessarily what happened to her, but the fact that fragments of her experience survived, hidden in walls, buried in chests, preserved in letters, passed down through oral histories, and eventually recovered by those committed to ensuring that such lives are not forgotten.
As visitors leave the memorial garden today, they pass by a simple plaque bearing a quote from Elellanena’s journal. one of the few passages that survived intact. They say we have no souls to save, yet they fear our spirits after death. They say we are not fully human, yet they tremble at our humanity when it shows itself.
Remember this, if nothing else, what they took from us in life, we reclaim in memory. And memory once awakened is a force that cannot be enslaved. Whether Elellanor actually wrote these words or whether they represent a collective experience that has been attributed to her individual voice is perhaps less important than the truth they convey.
In a system designed to dehumanize and erase the persistence of memory, individual and collective, becomes itself an act of resistance. And so we remember Elellanena Bowmont and the four children buried beneath an oak tree that no longer stands on land that has been transformed by time and development in a world that has changed and yet carries within it the echoes of past injustices and past resistances.
Their story continues to be told, continues to affect those who hear it, continues to challenge easy narratives about the past. In this way, Elellanena Bowmont, a woman who was meant to leave no mark on history beyond her monetary value in transaction ledgers, continues to speak across the centuries, reminding us that behind every entry in those ledgers was a full human life with thoughts, feelings, strategies for survival, and possibly in the end choices made on her own terms, however limited and tragic those terms might have been. The sound
of her story still echoes for those willing to listen. And in that echo, something of Ellen Bowmont lives on.
