In the 1820s Lucas Tavern offered travelers a comfortable place with clean beds, warm victuals, and a friendly hostess. Undoubtedly, one of the great moments of Eliza Lucas’s life was when she opened the door to welcome the handsome, bewigged General Lafayette, French hero of the American Revolution, on his visit to Montgomery in 1825. There is no record of what Mrs. Lucas served for dinner that night, but a menu of the tavern fare, found later, listed “chicken pie, ham, five vegetables, pudding and sauce, sweet pies, preserved fruits, a dessert of strawberries and plums, and wine and brandy.” All this cost the traveler seventy-five cents.
Those who doubt that Eliza’s spirit is at the tavern may begin to believe it after hearing of one Saturday morning in the fall of 1985, when a man arrived, unsolicited, to meet Eliza. He encountered her just inside the front door of the tavern, describing her as of medium height—about five feet three inches tall—and with a warm, pleasant disposition. Strangely enough, the tavern cat, ordinarily very docile, “refuses to go in or out the front door of the tavern unless one of us goes with her, and even then appears uneasy,” the late Director Mary Ann Neeley informed the author. It is a well-known fact that animals often sense the presence of a spirit even when people do not.
The tavern restoration was completed in 1979, and on January 2, 1980, it became the Visitor’s Reception Center and home of the offices for the Historic District. “Soon after we occupied it, Eliza began to make her presence felt,” said Ms. Neeley.
“In the winter of 1980, there was a late-afternoon meeting in front of the fire in the Tavern Room. The question was controversial, and one person began to speak very heatedly. At that point a great puff of smoke and ashes erupted from the fireplace, covering the dissident with a coat of chimney soot. All we could think of was that Eliza had not agreed with the speaker and had expressed herself forcefully.
“On another occasion two staff members were sitting at a table having lunch and were discussing the Historic District and its operation. With no warning, the door to the room began to just slide off its hinges. As they watched, it continued to slide and finally struck the floor with a resounding thud. Again, Eliza had manifested her displeasure over something that had been said.
“Objects disappear, only to reappear in new locations,” Ms. Neeley concluded. “Eliza rearranges, straightens, messes things up, or leaves them about in a quite unpredictable fashion. Nor can we be sure where she will reappear next.”
The Hull restoration and its nineteenth-century buildings bring the past to life and are highly popular with visitors, some of whom are amateur photographers.
Vince Ives was one of these. In the late summer of 1986, he coaxed a hostess into letting him stay to shoot some pictures after the restoration was closed for the day.
When the last visitor had left, and the tour guides as well, Vince went out through the Lucas Tavern’s back door and into the square with the other nineteenth-century buildings. They were bathed in the wonderful, warm light of late afternoon. He knew that the light would not last long, and he moved quickly from one building to another, shooting.
The third building was the 1890 schoolhouse, one of Vince’s favorites. It was filled with all the materials a student would have found in a classroom of the 1800s. Earlier he had noticed its interesting details—the potbellied stove, the pine schoolmaster’s desk, the kerosene lamp, the abacus, and the slates. It would have been nice to leave this building until last, like a dessert, but the natural light inside the room would be gone soon, and Vince did not want to use a flash.
He started toward the schoolhouse, thinking he might want to place some “school days” objects on the windowsill for a still arrangement. It would be great to have a teacher or someone using a slate or abacus to photograph in there, but that was out of the question. Vince had a sense of awe as he thought about all the boys and girls who had sat at these desks long ago, students who had grown up and left their mark in the world but who had now been dead for many more years than they had even been alive.
Closing the door quietly behind him, Vince looked around the room to decide where he would begin. Then he started in surprise. All the guides must not have gone, for there sat one in her nineteenth-century costume. She could be a picture subject for him, perhaps pose as the teacher. She was near the window and seemed absorbed in a book with a blue cover. Why had she stayed on after all the others had left?
Wearing that old-fashioned dress, with the light coming in from the window beside her, she would make a great picture. Vince started to ask her permission, but then thought how ridiculous that was, because none of the guides minded having their pictures taken. Besides, she might change position, and she was perfect just the way she was. Very quietly and unobtrusively, he began to shoot, moving a little to this side or that, adjusting the lens, bracketing. Unfortunately, the tripod he was carrying struck the leg of a desk with a sharp crack, and the sound seemed to startle her. Hurriedly, she got up to leave.
“Wait! Don’t go, please. I wonder if I could shoot a picture or two of you there at the old schoolmaster’s desk? It won’t take long.” She did not reply, which seemed rude, and, instead of going toward the desk to sit down, she stopped under the picture of George Washington.
Oh, no,
