The Ghosts of Centre Hill

Of course we are not allowed to take photos inside the museum.  How unique is this collection?  At the end of the tour I actually get up the nerve to ask permission to photograph!  Much easier said than done.  They refer me to the curator, Ms. Laura Willoughby.  She'll bring it before the Board and, if they agree, a contract will be offered.  There's no cost, it's just that some of the pieces don't belong to the museum, and they will have to get written permission from the owners of the different items.  Golly.

I submit a list of the items, permission is eventually given, a time is set for a non-tour photo visit, and we return again to Petersburg - a pleasure I assure you!

One of the first things we discover is that Lincoln was not the only President to visit Centre Hill.

William Howard Taft, President, 1909-1913, came to Petersburg to dedicate a monument honoring Pennsylvanian soldiers who served during the Civil War's Battle of the Crater.  Taft's father was Secretary of War and Attorney General under President Ulysses S Grant.  Taft himself road the path to the White House paved by fellow Republican Theodore Roosevelt.  He was one of the few Presidents that had a professional "life" after the presidency:  he became the only President to also serve as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1921-1930).  (See our blog post "America's First Supreme Court.") and only the second former president to serve as the head of a different branch of the federal government.  He is the only former president to administer the oath of office to another President, and the only Chief Justice to serve with associate justices whom he had appointed to the court.  (Whew!  And that's just a sampling of what you might discover if you take a few minutes to research him!)


What struck me as interesting about his visit to Centre Hill is that the ladies weren't allowed to attend the luncheon on the grounds.  I'm thinkin' that was not so very unusual for the times, but, not to be igonored,  Mrs. Davis set up a luncheon in her dining room for some thirty of the city's finest society ladies.

Photo Courtesy of the Petersburg Museums, City of Petersburg, VA

Here in the basement we also found a tunnel that lead out from under the original front of the house a hundred yards or so to the street below Centre Hill.

Photo Courtesy of the Petersburg Museums, City of Petersburg, VA

Ghost Watch occurs every January 24th, a date when residents living in the house heard what they believed to be soldiers' footsteps walking up and then back down a stairway.  Reservations are required, but on this day visitors get to go into the tunnel and then up to the third floor where no one is ever allowed to go (not even us with special permission to photograph!!)  How very wonderfully creepy!

From here we are taken upstairs and the treasures there to be revealed!