Caring Katina of Fall Hill (Fredericksburg)

The legend of the benevolent spirit which sometimes surfaces at Fall Hill had its origins in Williamsburg, when a young Indian girl—some have said she was a Sioux princess—was captured and given to then-governor Spotswood. Her name was Katina. When this venerable gentleman retired from active public life in 1720, and moved to his palace in the wilderness at Germanna, near Fredericksburg, he took the Indian maiden with him, and she became the nurse, or nanny, for his four children. Her services were excellent, and she was treated like one of the family. William Byrd was so impressed with her during a visit, it is said he gave her the "largest tip" ever received by a servant.

After Spotswood died in 1740, Katina went to work for the Thorntons at Fall Hill, where she helped raise three generations of children. "But she was much more than a servant," says Mrs. Franklin. She was "the essence of dedication and devotion to the young ones she loved, and they loved her." Recalled as being small, dark and lithesome, Katina taught the young Thorntons the ways of the Indian, and how best to appreciate nature's most beautiful secrets.

She died in 1777, and was buried in the garden, "beside a little stream, with great boulders of granite gathered from her native hills marking the spot...this Indian sleeps her last sleep beneath a tree, up and over which climbs a wild grape vine..."

"When I first came to Fall Hill to live, I was nine years old," Mrs. Franklin says. "My grandfather took me by the hand one day and told me, quite solemnly, 'I'm going to show you the grave of our old family nurse, Katina.' We knelt beside a little grave covered by a granite stone. But nothing was written on it. Katina was a slave and the family was very careful not to discriminate or show partiality by engraving her stone.

"My grandfather then told me that when his great-grandfather lived, she brought him up and taught him to speak Indian. She was a very old woman then, and when she died, he was inconsolable. He wept and said he'd lost his best friend."

Exactly when Katina first reappeared at Fall Hill, allegedly to make sure that young descendants of the Thornton family were being properly cared for, is not certain, though recorded reports of her sightings go back to the early years of this century. When Mrs. Bessie Taylor Robinson lived in the house in the 1920s, she said that "many persons...have spoken of seeing her walking about the plantation as though looking for her companions of long ago."

Mrs. Franklin says one of the first occurrences she remembers was when two boys were home from school on vacation and were sleeping in the nursery. The next morning one of the youngsters came downstairs, "appearing quite pale," and asked Mrs. Robinson if she had come in their room the previous night to cover them. She told them no, and inquired why he asked. He told her that "an old woman with long black braids" had come in during the night and then disappeared through the wall at the head of the bed!

Mrs. Franklin says that in 1938 a New York journalist named Alice Dickson came to Fall Hill as a guest of her mother. "One afternoon she was taking a nap upstairs. She awoke around five o'clock and started to get up when, she said, a young boy dressed in knee britches walked through the open door. He had his hair tied back and was attired in colonial period clothes. Then she said that behind him followed a little Indian woman with long black braided hair."

Mrs. Franklin says the woman thought the children in the house had dressed up to amuse her. But when she addressed them, they didn't answer. They just disappeared! "There were no children in the house at the time. She'd seen the ghost of Katina!"

In 1969, a newspaper reporter named Linda Raymond was invited to spend a night at Fall Hill by Mrs. Franklin. She wanted to do an article on Katina. She started her resulting story by saying, "She'd been dead for more than 200 years (actually 192), but she was there that night close beside me, as near and thick a presence as fog in a river bottom." Ms. Raymond also said, "I could feel the ghost's presence all around us. The only thing that seemed strange was that we couldn't see her when she was so close."

On yet another occasion, Mrs. Robinson saw the apparition. She came home late one night from a meeting in town and as she stood in the downstairs hall, she witnessed "a figure" come out of the room where her younger son was sleeping. Upon examination, Mrs. Robinson found every other member of the family sound asleep and all the doors and windows were locked shut. She told friends she had no doubt had seen Katina, still checking on the youngsters in the house.

And, finally, a few years ago, Mrs. Franklin herself had an ethereal experience in her bedroom. "I had been away for awhile and I was in bed, wide awake, reading. I had my little granddaughter in the house with me. We'd just recently lost her father, and it was a period of considerable stress, as you can imagine.

"I had never seen a ghost of any description before, although, of course, I was well aware of the stories about Katina. I never thought I would see her, and to be truthful, I was never quite convinced that anyone had ever seen her. Imagination can do a lot of things, you know. But I definitely wasn't dreaming. I was alert. Then, at the foot of my bed there appeared this darkly beautiful face. She just looked at me with those dark Indian eyes. Her expression never changed, but it seemed like she had a look of great concern. I interpreted it to mean that I had better take good care of my granddaughter. She was there just for an instant, and then she was gone. But I have no question that she was real."

There is a curious footnote to the appearances and disappearances of Katina over the years at Fall Hill. Mrs. Franklin says that those who claimed to have seen the Indian ghost say that she most often has been seen near the top of the stairs, where she vanishes from sight by apparently walking through a bedroom wall.

"Years ago, we stripped off the old wallpaper in that room," Mrs. Franklin notes. "We discovered that during the 1800s there were some alterations made in the house. At the spot where Katina appears to walk through the wall, there was, under the wallpaper, an old sealed-up doorway. It was a second door to that bedroom. I believe it was once the nursery!"