More Ghosts of Georgetown

by Elizabeth Robertson Huntsinger

  As Woodlands was supposed to be unoccupied, several men entered the house and made a complete search. Nowhere was there a sign that anyone had been in the dwelling in a very long time. In the story under the roofline, where the light had been seen in the window, there was no lamp and no indication of any sort of light source.

  One of the older men looked out through the window and gasped in surprise. There, out in the blackness, were the brightly colored running lights of a vessel. He quickly drew the others’ attention to the sight.

  The older man realized that these must be the legendary ghostship lights he had heard about as a child. He then related to his companions the story of the lost schooner and the annual appearance of the lights. Perhaps the night at hand was the anniversary of the schooner’s disappearance, he concluded.

  Once outside and back on the dock, the men were again able to see the high window of old Woodlands. Once again, there was a light burning brightly.

  After the fishermen were saved by the light from the upper story of the abandoned house—from the window where the captain’s wife had kept a lamp for so many years—Woodlands fell into disrepair and finally burned.

  Still, the lights of the long-lost schooner continue to appear on the Atlantic off Murrells Inlet one night every September. They are the ghostly remnants of strong feelings that transcend time—the determination of a long-ago sea captain and the lasting faith he and his wife had in each other.

  Sunnyside

  _____________________In the early evening, as the sun is sinking behind the massive, moss-draped live oaks that line the saltwater creeks of Murrells Inlet, lengthening shadows take over the low country seascape. Ordinary shapes assume spectral appearances as ghostly legends surrounding the inlet come to mind.

  It was on a long-ago evening such as this that a murder took place, a cruel killing that has caused the restless victim to walk the inlet shores of Sunnyside, where she drew her last breath, ever since.

  Sunnyside is normally as cheerful a house as its name suggests. Built in the early nineteenth century, when most travel was by water rather than land, it faces the waterfront. The facade, with its white columns and comfortable veranda, allows a panoramic view of Murrells Inlet. Though some say Sunnyside was constructed by Governor Joseph Alston for his legendary and doomed wife, Theodosia, it was in fact built by rice planter J. Motte Alston as a summer residence.

  Alston bought land at Murrells Inlet from fellow rice planter Plowden Weston before the Civil War. Here, not far from Woodbourne, his rice plantation on the Waccamaw River, Alston made plans to build a creek-side home. He later chronicled the construction of Sunnyside and his years there in his memoirs. “It was a beautifully wooded tract of land, live and water oaks, magnolias and cedars, on a bold salt water creek,” he wrote. “Here I built an eight room residence. The plan I drew myself.”

  His carpenter, a man named Richmond, managed the construction. “The frame was all finished at Woodbourne, moved across the river in flats and hauled to the shore by ox teams,” Alston recorded. “Richmond did the whole work—of course with the assistance of some of my men to lift the heavy timbers. Of course, all the fine work, such as doors, windows, paneling, plastering, and painting was not domestic. I hired a New York builder to put up an oval stair way. Altogether the Sunnyside style of architecture was an improvement over that of Woodbourne.

  “But Rome, as they say, was not built in a day,” Alston continued, “so it consumed a winter and summer and a month or two over, to have our new home completed.”

  Sunnyside allowed the family to enjoy Murrells Inlet’s creekside life while Alston remained a short distance from the duties of managing his plantation. “We were two miles from Woodbourne, and every day I would look after my planting interests and return to dinner,” he wrote. “My table was most bountifully supplied; the plantation supplied all the poultry, etc.; and the deep creek in front of the house all the fish, oysters, clams, crabs, and shrimp, to say nothing of the game from both places.

  “I was quite in love with our new home. And so we resided in our new home always ’til the first of July when we would seek a cooler atmosphere, either in the mountains or on Pawleys Island, some 12 miles below. In October we would return to Sunnyside.”

  As the years passed and his children grew older, Alston felt they needed more education than was available locally or through tutors. He decided to sell Woodbourne and its vast rice fields and move his family to Columbia. “As there was no inducement to live at Sunnyside which was only an adjunct to my rice plantation, I therefore sold the latter to my brother Charles,” he recorded.

  This sale took place less than three years before the Civil War. Charles died impoverished shortly after the war, and Sunnyside was eventually sold out of the Alston family.

  In the early 1900s, it was operated as a fishing lodge by Mr. and Mrs. William Avant. Near the end of August 1909, during the Avants’ ownership, Dr. Grover Cleveland Bigham and his young wife, Ruth, residents of Harpers, South Carolina, vacationed for a time at Sunnyside. All was not well between the couple, for Ruth carried a terrible secret. She was almost certain that her husband’s brother, Smiley Bigham, had murdered a young black man the previous month.

  The murdered youth, Arthur Davis, had worked as a field hand for Smiley on the Bighams’ farm in Florence County. One hot July afternoon, Smiley had accused Arthur of injuring a mule in the eye. After being struck down by the enraged Smiley, Arthur had run home to escape him. Smiley had then gone to the Davis home and told Arthur’s mother that he wanted to punish her son. Fearful of Smiley, she told him she would no longer permit her son to work for the Bighams and that he had already left to seek other employment. She added that if her son had indeed hurt the mule, then the law, rather than Smiley Bigham, would punish him. Smiley coldly replied that Arthur had until sundown to come to the Bigham residence.

  When night fell and there was no sign of Arthur, Smiley became upset. During a terrible display of temper witnessed by members of the Bigham family, including Cleveland and Ruth, who were visiting from Harpers, Smiley announced that Arthur would suffer as the mule had suffered.

  He then left the Bigham household, sought out two other men, and went—masked and under cover of darkness—to the Davis home. Ignoring Arthur’s mother’s refusal to let them inside, the three men barged into the house and dragged the frightened young man into the night. They then mounted and rode away, hauling Arthur beside one of their horses.

  After searching frantically all night, Arthur’s mother found her son in the far reaches of the woods, his lifeless body battered by the dense underbrush.

  The sheriff and the coroner examined Arthur’s body at the scene. Noting the countless lacerations and bruises and beginning to assume the youth had died from loss of blood, they nearly missed the small drop that had coagulated near his ear. Upon closer examination, they discovered that a long nail had been driven into his head.

  There was little doubt about who had perpetrated this heinous crime. During the abduction, Arthur’s mother had recognized the voice of Smiley Bigham and listened as he and his companions had called one another by their first names.

  The sheriff arrested Smiley and his two accomplices. But just as quickly, all three were released on bond. A trial for the murder of Arthur Davis was set for October.

  Once Smiley was home, the Bigham family gathered in support of him. They all promised to swear he had not left home on the night of the murder.

  They all promised, that is, except Ruth. Cleveland’s young wife, who had finished college just two years earlier and taught school for a year before being swept off her feet by her husband, was unversed in the legendary murderousness and loyalty of the Bigham family. She naively announced that she would tell the truth if called upon to testify. The truth, she went on bravely, was that Smiley, after vowing to punish Arthur, had been away from home the night of the murder.

  Out of Ruth’s hearing, Cleveland assured the Bighams that there was no n
eed to worry about Ruth’s testifying against Smiley, because he would personally see to it that she did not.

  Ruth soon traveled to Mountville in Laurens County, where she had grown up and where she had been teaching school when she met Cleveland. “Mrs. Bigham,” the Georgetown Times later reported, “when at her old home some few weeks ago on a visit and receiving letters and telegrams from her husband to come home at once, expressed reluctance at the idea of going and even wept when she, pressed with the letters and telegrams, realized that she must return to her husband.”

  It wasn’t long before Ruth was reluctantly home in Harpers with her husband, preparing for a trip to Sunnyside, the Murrells Inlet fishing lodge and boardinghouse run by Mr. and Mrs. William Avant.

  Ruth and Cleveland were uncomfortable around each other at Sunnyside, to say the least. What would have been a peaceful, happy respite for most couples was for them a stay filled with angry words punctuated by long, stony silences. Ruth simply would not abandon her principles and allow her brother-in-law to get away with murder.

  On Saturday, September 4, Ruth changed into swimming attire and threw her husband’s long grey raincoat over her bathing costume. She knew that William Avant and Cleveland were on Sunnyside’s front veranda, which overlooked the creek. So as not to draw the attention of her husband, whose ill mood she wanted to avoid, she did not walk out the veranda door but used a door on the side of the house. It was near dusk when she reached the water.

  Meanwhile, Cleveland was laying a plan. In the two weeks that he and Ruth had been staying at Sunnyside, he had spent his evenings on the veranda with Avant, plying him with whiskey and stories of the ghosts that walked the inlet. Even now, they were ruminating about ghosts. Didn’t Avant believe that Alice, the ghost of the young girl who haunted the nearby Hermitage, walked along this very creek? Such were the questions he asked.

  Avant was superstitious but not normally afraid of ghosts. However, since Cleveland had brought the local spirits to his attention, Avant had witnessed them on two occasions. One sultry night, after being awakened by a slight but persistent rapping sound, he had seen a ghostly figure at his window. And just the previous night, while alone on the veranda, he had seen something pale and wispy rising from near the water’s edge. Between these ghostly sightings and Cleveland’s eerie tales, Avant was wishing that he and his wife, who was expecting their first child, could move away from the inlet.

  On this balmy September night, as Ruth walked toward the creek, Cleveland was busy convincing Avant that a ghost could be frightened away by firing shots at it. No one would be hurt, Sunnyside would be rid of its ghost, and Mrs. Avant and her unborn child would be safe, he said.

  Through the wispy Spanish moss hanging from the live oaks between the veranda and the water, Cleveland and Avant made out a figure walking slowly to the creek. It was a phantom, Cleveland insisted, and they must shoot it to drive it away. Avant wondered aloud whether the figure was Ruth, but Cleveland replied that Ruth was resting in her room. The men went inside for a shotgun, returned to the porch, and advanced toward the water just as the figure bent down.

  At Cleveland’s insistence, Avant aimed his shotgun at the figure and emptied both barrels. As the men dashed back into Sunnyside, Avant had a horrible feeling. After a quick search of the house, he discovered to his horror what Cleveland already knew: Ruth was not resting in her room, nor was she anywhere in the house. The sickening realization that he had been duped into murdering an innocent woman settled over Avant like a shroud.

  He and Cleveland grabbed a light and rushed back outside and down to the creek, where Ruth Bigham lay bleeding into the sand, barely breathing. Cleveland picked up his wife, then laid her back down. Two men who would later testify at the trial—one of whom was lodging at a neighboring house and the other of whom was camping nearby—rushed to the scene. Someone picked up the dying Ruth, carried her across the yard, and laid her on the veranda, where the blood pouring from the wound in her back soaked deep into the steps. She took her last breath on the porch of Sunnyside.

  Avant went into Georgetown with the shocking news of Ruth’s death and returned with a deputy sheriff and the coroner.

  The detailed accounts of the killing of Ruth Bigham printed in the Georgetown Times and the Charleston News and Courier both ended with the verdict of the coroner’s inquest: “The deceased came to her death by gunshot wounds, by mischance, at the hands of W. B. Avant, and G. C. Bigham as accessory thereto; both men laboring under great mental excitement and fear at the time of the deed.” In both accounts, Cleveland and Avant were purported to have believed that Ruth Bigham was a burglar. They allegedly called out to her several times before Avant, at Cleveland’s insistence, shot her in the back from a distance of twelve feet. Neither man was mentioned as having mistaken Ruth for a ghost. In fact, Cleveland said that before Avant fired, they had feared being shot themselves.

  But word soon spread that Avant had fired under his and Cleveland’s assumption she was a ghost.

  A scathing article on the front page of the Georgetown Times on September 8 criticized the inquest jury for bringing a charge of manslaughter in a case that was so obviously a homicide. It also expressed surprise that “a young wife met a horrible death at the hands of two big men, in the light of day, because they were afraid of ghosts.”

  The front page of the Georgetown Times of September 25 carried an article citing the recent unhappiness in the Bighams’ marriage. It also discussed the inability of friends of the deceased to believe Ruth’s death was an accident.

  The State carried statements from fishermen who had been near the scene of the shooting but had not been available for the inquest. These fishermen said that from their vantage point on the creek at the time of the shooting, they could easily make out Ruth Bigham to be a woman. If they saw her so clearly, the fishermen insisted, the men on the porch at Sunnyside, who were much closer to Ruth, surely saw that she was no ghost.

  The trial of Cleveland Bigham and William Avant in the death of Ruth Bigham was scheduled for late October in Georgetown. Meanwhile, the trial of Smiley Bigham and his two henchmen for the murder of Arthur Davis was held in Florence County. The effort was futile. Several of the state’s witnesses had left the area, and the families of the three defendants stated that the men had been in their homes on the night of the young man’s death. Ruth Bigham never got the chance to testify about Smiley’s determination to make Arthur Davis suffer and about his absence from home during the murder. Smiley and his cohorts were found not guilty.

  The trial for the death of Ruth Bigham got under way on October 21 in the Georgetown County Courthouse. Designed in the Greek Revival style by Robert Mills and built in 1822 of sandstone-colored stucco over brick, the stately courthouse had been the scene of many memorable trials. Few, however, had garnered interest like the Ruth Bigham case. The prominent Bigham family was legendary for its murderous deeds and the ease with which it escaped prosecution. Smiley had just gotten away with murder, and it appeared that Cleveland was about to do the same.

  Among the prosecution witnesses were some who had not been present at the inquest, during which Ruth’s death was ruled accidental. Prominent among them was a Mr. Smith of Mullins, who had been 120 yards away when he heard a shot. Upon hearing a voice shouting, “Bring light, have killed someone!” he had approached to see the trouble. At a distance of 30 to 40 yards, Smith testified, he had clearly seen the tragic scene on the beach. He also testified that the victim had been shot in the open at least 40 feet from any shrubbery, and that it had not been dark when the gun was fired.

  J. D. Murchison of Marion, the man who had been camping near Sunnyside, testified that at the moment he heard the fatal gunshot, it had not been quite dark, and that he had been able to recognize a man in that light from sixty-five yards away.

  Other witnesses corroborated the testimony of Smith and Murchison.

  Despite having Congressman J. Willard Ragsdale as their defense attorney, Cleveland and A
vant had little evidence in their defense. The jury pronounced them guilty of manslaughter. Refusing their attorney’s immediate request for a new trial, the judge sentenced the two men to three and a half years’ hard labor.

  Following an appeal to the South Carolina Supreme Court, Cleveland was released on a bail of fifteen hundred dollars. By the time it was discovered that he should not have been released due to the appeal’s not being made during the required time, it was too late. Cleveland had fled, and his family members had cunningly deeded the holdings posted for his bail to other parties. Obviously, they had known Cleveland would flee. Avant was eventually released on bail also.

  In April 1910, during the spring term of the South Carolina Supreme Court, the case was tried a second time. Again, Cleveland and Avant were found guilty. The time had at last come for them to go to the penitentiary, but they were nowhere to be found.

  Avant had escaped to Texas, where he was soon recognized and apprehended. Returned to South Carolina, he served his sentence and was released in 1913. He returned to his wife and little girl, who had not even been born when her father was jailed for manslaughter. He did not, however, return to Sunnyside, but settled on a farm in Georgetown County. He continued to be haunted by the events of 1909. Avant went through periods when he failed to eat or disappeared for days. He died within a short time.

  Cleveland Bigham remarried, fathered a little girl, and bought a house in Atlanta, where he had fled after his first trial. He kept in touch with his wily Bigham relatives in Florence County, secretly visiting them on occasion, staying in a secret, concealed room they constructed especially for his visits.