Missouri Governor's Mansion

Nine-year-old Carrie Crittenden died of diphtheria in the mansion in 1882, during the same period her father Governor Crittenden was feuding with Jesse James. A century later, a workman in the attic spent an entire day with a little girl he assumed was a visitor's child, only to learn no children were in the building.

Jesse James once sent a letter to the Missouri Governor's Mansion threatening to kidnap Carrie Crittenden, the nine-year-old daughter of Governor Thomas Crittenden. Six months after Jesse's death, his brother Frank walked into the mansion's library and surrendered to the governor personally. Carrie never got to see any of it play out. She died of diphtheria in the mansion in 1882, during an epidemic that swept Jefferson City. She was the only child ever to die inside the building.

The mansion was built in eight months and finished in late December 1871. George Ingham Barnett, a well-known St. Louis architect, designed it in the Second Empire style, with a 13-foot mansard roof and four pink granite columns donated by Governor B. Gratz Brown from a quarry in Iron County. The original three-story red brick building measured 66 feet 6 inches square and had 13 bedrooms, no bathrooms, and no closets. Much of the construction labor came from prisoners at the nearby Missouri State Penitentiary. The whole thing cost $74,960, furnishings included. Brown moved in on January 20, 1872.

Inside, the most striking feature is the freestanding Grand Stairway, hand-carved from black walnut, winding up through the center of the house. The ceilings rise 17 feet. Marble fireplaces anchor the main rooms, and the furnishings lean Renaissance Revival, restored during Kit Bond's administration in the 1980s to approximate the mansion's 1871 appearance.

The ghost story centers on Carrie. Her full name was Caroline Allen Crittenden, and she spent her childhood playing on the mansion's lawn while her father dealt with one of Missouri's most volatile periods. Governor Crittenden had offered a $10,000 reward for the capture of Jesse James, which led directly to Jesse's assassination by Robert Ford in 1882. The threatening letters to the mansion were part of that feud. Carrie caught diphtheria during the same epidemic that killed children across the city. She died at nine years old. The mansion was decorated for Christmas that year with the Crittenden family in mourning.

The first reported sighting came roughly a century later, during Governor Kit Bond's tenure. A workman doing restoration in the attic came downstairs and asked the housekeeper about "the little girl" who'd been up there playing all day while he worked. The housekeeper told him there was no one else in the house. The governor didn't have children. When someone explained who the girl likely was, the workman left and refused to come back to finish the job.

That single encounter is the most detailed account on record, but it's not the only claim. Staff and visitors over the years have described objects moving on their own, faint voices in empty rooms, and something harder to pin down: ripples of a child's laughter drifting up and down the stairway. The rocking horse in one of the attic bedrooms has been found moving on its own, though no one has caught it in the act. The activity clusters in the attic and upper floors, the parts of the house where Carrie would have played.

In 1996, First Lady Jean Carnahan had a bronze fountain erected in front of the mansion for its 125th anniversary. The fountain represents Carrie, dedicated to "good health for Missouri children." It's a quiet memorial for a girl most people in Jefferson City have forgotten.

The mansion sits at 100 Madison Street and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since May 21, 1969. Public tours are available, and the Crittenden family's three grown sons all went on to notable careers: William as vice-consul to Mexico, Thomas Jr. as mayor of Kansas City. But the youngest Crittenden, the one who never grew up, seems to be the one who stayed.