The Turning Angel of Natchez, Miss.

By Roscoe Barnes III, PhD

 

#VisitNatchez

#TurningAngel

The Turning Angel

My colleague, Katie Ernst, and I were driving around Natchez looking for the Devil’s Punch Bowl when we came upon Cemetery Road. I was commenting on the beauty of the Natchez City Cemetery when she pointed to a striking white figure, a tall angel monument, just off the side of the road.

 
“That’s the Turning Angel,” she said.
 
I looked over and saw the angel standing above five headstones.
 
“Why is it called the Turning Angel?” I asked, squinting to get a better look.
 
“People believe that when you drive past it at night, and your headlights hit it at a certain angle, she appears to turn.”
 
“Did you ever see her turn?”
 
“When I was a teenager, my friends and I would drive up and down the road at night just to see if she would turn,” Katie said. She chuckled. “Yes, she appeared to turn.”
 
“Wow,” I said. “That caught me off guard.”

Roscoe Barnes III, PhD

Apparently, it’s an optical illusion and one I will try to see for myself and shoot a video of my findings.

 
The story about the Turning Angel is well known in southwest Mississippi, but in the mid-2000s, it generated world-wide acclaim because of the writings of Natchez author Greg Iles, who titled his best-selling novel, “Turning Angel (Thomson Gale, 2006).
 
The story of the Turning Angel is a sad one. It’s about an explosion that occurred on March 14, 1908, at the Natchez Drug Company that resulted in the deaths of five employees, most of whom were teenagers.
 
The company’s five-story brick structure was located at the corner of Main Street and South Union Street. The employees who died were all young ladies: Carrie Murray, 22, Ada White, 19, Inez Netterville, 17, Luella Booth, 17, and Mary Worthy, 12.

The owner of the company reportedly became so distraught over the tragedy that he purchased the gravesite for the young ladies and the monument of the angel to watch over them. Today she stands proudly and majestically, looking calmly over the five headstones of the ladies whose lives were cut short in that 1908 tragedy.

 
On the back base of the monument, the following words are etched in all caps:
 
“ERECTED BY THE NATCHEZ DRUG COMPANY TO THE MEMORY OF THE UNFORTUNATE EMPLOYEES WHO LOST THEIR LIVES IN THE GREAT DISASTER THAT DESTROYED ITS BUILDING ON MARCH 14, 1908. 

CARRIE O. MURRAY
INEZ NETTERVILLE
LUELLA D. BOOTH
MARY E. WORTHY
ADA WHITE

“Thy will be done.”

For more information, visit: https://www.natchez.ms.us/413/Support-our-Cemetery

---------------------------------

Roscoe Barnes III, Ph.D., is the Cultural Heritage and Tourism Manager at Visit Natchez.