Gadsby’s Tavern and the Female Stranger

Gadsby’s Tavern is a pair of adjoining buildings in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia: a smaller tavern built about 1785 and the larger City Tavern and Hotel, completed in 1792. John Gadsby leased the larger building in 1796, added the smaller one in 1802 and ran both until 1808, when he moved to Baltimore, but his name stuck to the complex. George Washington, whose home was a few miles away, attended the town’s Birthnight Ball here twice; Thomas Jefferson was honored with a banquet in 1801 and the Marquis de Lafayette was feted here on his 1824 tour. The building later declined and was nearly demolished; the Metropolitan Museum of Art bought the ballroom woodwork in 1917, and the building reopened as a city museum in 1976. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1963.

The legend of the Female Stranger begins in October 1816. A man and a seriously ill woman arrived by ship, and they took rooms at the tavern, with the woman reportedly keeping a long black veil on. She died there, aged 23 years and 8 months according to the inscription on her grave, on 14 October 1816. Her husband arranged her burial in the cemetery of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, ordered an elaborate tombstone engraved only “To the memory of a Female Stranger” and then, the story goes, borrowed money from a merchant for the stone and left town without settling. No name appears on the monument, which tells how her husband held her in his arms as she died.

In the two centuries since, writers have supplied identities for her. Some say she was Theodosia Burr Alston, Aaron Burr’s daughter, who was lost at sea in 1813; the museum’s director, Liz Williams, points out that this does not fit the dates. Others offer a lovers’ elopement, counterfeit-money schemes or even an exiled Napoleon. Published versions run from a poem in the 1830s to a long story in 1904 involving a ship called the Four Sons and a husband who returns every year, and the facts have been embroidered so often that it is hard to untangle the truth.

The ghost story attaches to Room 8 at the tavern, where she is said to have died. Visitors and tour guides have said her face can be seen at the window, holding a candle, and some people say she walks the halls or stands near her tombstone. The tavern’s museum director has said she has never experienced a ghost in the building herself, and local historian Michael Lee Pope put it well: “ghost stories are just a way we tell our history.” The mystery remains one of the best-known stories of Alexandria, with a grave that is now a stop on ghost and history tours.

A pale woman’s face at an upper window of Room 8, sometimes holding a candle; footsteps in the halls; a presence by her grave in St. Paul’s churchyard.

The window of Room 8 on the tavern’s upper floor; her grave lies a short walk away in St. Paul’s churchyard.

The Female Stranger’s tombstone is among the best-known curiosities in Alexandria, featured in writer Michael Lee Pope’s Ghost Stories of Alexandria, local walking tours and articles in outlets such as Mental Floss.