Old Quaker Cemetery

Agnes of Glasgow stowed away on a ship during the Revolution to find her fiance Lieutenant Angus McPherson, walked through the South Carolina wilderness while critically ill with help from Catawba leader King Haigler, and died before reaching him. Her ghost still walks the streets and roads of Camden, and visitors to the 1759 Quaker Cemetery hear weeping and see a woman in period dress vanishing between the graves.

In 1759, a Quaker named Samuel Wyly signed over four acres of land in Camden for a period of 999 years. The rent: one peppercorn per year. That land became the Quaker Cemetery, and one of its 6,100 graves belongs to a Scottish woman who crossed the Atlantic as a stowaway, walked through the South Carolina wilderness while gravely ill, and died without ever finding the man she came for.

Her name was Agnes. Born in Glasgow around 1760, she followed her fiance, Lieutenant Angus McPherson, after he shipped out with the British Army during the Revolution. She arrived in Charleston sometime around 1780 and learned McPherson had been wounded and moved to a hospital in Camden, roughly 120 miles inland. Agnes set out through the backcountry on foot, sick and alone, until King Haigler of the Catawba tribe found her and guided her the rest of the way.

The legend splits here. One version says McPherson died in her arms after a brief reunion. Another says she never found him at all, that she succumbed to her illness before reaching him. Both versions agree on the ending: King Haigler buried Agnes in the Quaker Cemetery under cover of darkness.

Camden is the oldest inland city in South Carolina, settled in 1730, and the cemetery matches the town's age. Early Quaker graves sit under massive live oaks, marked by brick arched vaults with no headstones. Seven Revolutionary War patriots are buried here, alongside three Confederate generals: Joseph Brevard Kershaw, John Doby Kennedy, and John Bordenave Villepigue. Richard Rowland Kirkland, the Confederate soldier who carried water to wounded Union troops at the Battle of Fredericksburg and became known as the Angel of Marye's Heights, is also here. A South Carolina governor, two Medal of Honor recipients, and generations of Camden's doctors and merchants fill out the rest.

But Agnes is the one people come looking for. Visitors walking through the cemetery at dusk have seen a woman in period dress moving between the graves, vanishing when approached. Some hear soft weeping near her burial site. Others describe a gentle breeze that seems to come from no direction, as if someone just passed close by. The sightings aren't limited to the cemetery grounds. Agnes has been spotted walking the streets and rural roads around Camden, still covering ground, still searching. Every October, the city runs haunted tours through the cemetery, and a local actress portrays Agnes for visitors.

King Haigler is now considered something like Camden's patron saint. He brokered peace between the Catawba and the colonists, protected settlers during the French and Indian War, and, if the legend holds, carried a dying Scottish woman through the woods to a town she'd never seen so she could be buried among strangers. Agnes's grave sits in a cemetery that's grown from four acres to fifty, surrounded by generals and governors who lived full lives and died in their beds. She was about twenty years old.