But even though Maddy makes her home in the South, her heart and political sympathies belong to General James Downing, a soldier from the North. Serving for a brief time as a nurse after the devastating battle of Gettysburg, Madeline Howard saves the life of Elliot Haywood, a colonel in the Confederate Home Guard. The band, Looking Glass, started up at Rutgers’s New Brunswick campus and probably knew Mary’s tale.Bestselling author Mary Ellis ( A Widow’s Hope) presents The Lady and the Officer, Book 2 of her new Civil War historical romance series, which tells the stories of brave women and the men who love them. Her love, though, goes unrequited-the ocean is the seaman’s true love. Today, the parking lot serves an 18-theater movieplex.įun fact! Mary’s sea yarn may have inspired the 1972 pop hit “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl).” The lyrics tell the story of a girl who falls in love with a sailor. The parking lot was graded lower and lower, leaving her headstone looming eight feet over a sea of blacktop. Over the years, Mary’s resting place appeared to rise from the pavement. Mary’s grave was smack in the middle, her headstone thankfully untouched by the road roller. The woods were cleared and the ground was graded to make room for a parking lot. It was the 1960s, and plans had been made to build a discount store on what was once Mary’s property. In 1828, Mary-now a spinster-died alone and her family buried her near the river.įast forward 140 years. She bought farmland along the Raritan and kept waiting. So Mary waited.Īs local legend goes, Mary rode that horse to the riverbank every day, waiting to embrace her sweetheart when he came ashore. Before leaving, he gave Mary his trusty horse and promised to return. The captain had to set sail, and he cruised down the Raritan River to New York Harbor.
The couple courted, schmoozed, and made plans for the future. There, she fell in love with a local sea captain (who is rumored to have also been a Revolutionary War officer). In the 1790s, Mary moved to New Brunswick, New Jersey to live with her sister.
She’s still there, but the trees are long gone-her body now rests in the middle of a movieplex parking lot. When Mary Ellis died in 1828, her family buried her in a peaceful patch of woods near a bend in the Raritan River.
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