The Sorrel-Weed House: Haunted By Bad History?

One of my great loves is unravelling a mystery. It is why I do what I do, namely running Savannah ghost tours and writing books about all the great ghost stories in this delightfully weird Southern Gothic town. One story, which took me a long time to uncover, is the following tale: a location with some great haunted stories, but marred by badly-researched legends. Here is my attempt to cast some light on the subject.

The Sorrel-Weed House
6 West Harris Street

On one edge of Madison Square sits one of the finest architectural efforts in Savannah, an amber-colored Greek Revival jewel tucked into a leafy green setting called the Sorrel-Weed House. This home has sparked strong feelings in many people all throughout its lifetime here in the Historic District. There is a rift within the paranormal community between what actually occurred here historically versus what has long been reported as fact on ghost tours. It seems like everyone in town has a take on this particular house. The battle lines are still drawn around the Sorrel-Weed House, which could be an ironic turn of phrase, as you’ll soon see. If you were to take a ghost tour, you might hear a variation of the following story:

The Sorrel-Weed House was built in the early 1840’s, and designed by noted architect Charles Cluskey. The house was built by Francis Sorrel, a wealthy plantation owner who was originally from the West Indies. He married soon after he emigrated to the United States, pairing with a young woman named Lucinda Moxley, who was just 17 years old. She was from an extremely wealthy family which did business with Francis. Unfortunately, Lucinda died just five years into their marriage in 1827. Two years later, Francis was joined in matrimony again, this time marrying his dead wife’s younger sister, 23 year old Matilda, in 1829. Francis’ shipping business grew exponentially during this time period, and he quickly rose to be one of the city’s most prominent and wealthy men. However, Francis did have his vices. He had a long-ongoing affair with one young slave girl in particular named Molly. Supposedly, Francis arranged for Molly to have special quarters set up above the carriage house so that they could have their lover’s trysts in private. However, they were discovered one night by Matilda Sorrel. Enraged by her husband’s infidelity, Matilda committed suicide by leaping from the second story balcony of the house, bashing her head against the flagstone courtyard. A few weeks after this grisly death, the slave Molly was found in the carriage house hanging from a noose, in yet another alleged suicide on the grounds.

These grisly deaths are typically given by tour guides as the reason for the hauntings surrounding the Sorrel-Weed House. But is it true? Let’s examine the facts. What about the crux of the story, the alleged affair between Francis and the slave girl, Molly? And how does it fit in with stories told about the Sorrel-Weed House? Well, no documentation (including census records) has ever surfaced which proves that Molly was a real person.

But isn’t the infidelity/suicide story at Sorrel-Weed at least plausible? you might be wondering at this point. The answer, stunningly, is no, it isn’t. The entire tale is rendered completely meaningless because of another date crucial to the story: June 14th, 1859, roughly nine months before Matilda’s suicide. That is the date that Francis Sorrel sold the house on the corner to Henry D. Weed for $23,000 (a little over half a million in today’s dollars), and moved his entire family next door into 12 West Harris Street. This means that the suicide happened next door at 12 West Harris, not at the Sorrel-Weed House. The evidence that the suicide occurred at 12 West Harris is overwhelming. Matilda’s suicide on March 27th, 1860 is recorded in a compilation of Civil War-era letters later published in a book called The Children of Pride. Charles C. Jones, Jr. reports to his mother in a letter dated the same day as Matilda Sorrel’s death that Mrs. Sorrel threw herself off of a second- or third- story window “in a moment of lunacy… falling upon the pavement of the yard,” a plunge which ended her life. Charles then mentions the location of her death was “…her residence on Harris Street, next door to the house which was the family mansion for so many years…(emphasis added).” Now we know the folklore account of the Matilda Sorrel suicide and the slave Molly suicide/murder is wrong. The historical record conclusively proves that they lived at a different address (12 West, not 6 West) when Matilda’s suicide took place.

But there are still many paranormal things which have happened (and continue to happen) at this particular house, events which are difficult to explain away. For instance, many people feel a strange sensation of nausea and choking in the basement. Those who consider themselves sensitive to psychic energy have described feeling panicked for no reason. Then there is the fact that people’s cameras and cellphone batteries, which were fully charged before the tour began, are sometimes found to be completely drained of energy by the end of the tour.

But why would people be experiencing strange happenings when the suicide happened elsewhere? There is another, barely-explored theory, one which might explain the strange conflicted emotions many experience in the house. Perhaps the hauntings at the Sorrel-Weed House have little to do with Francis and Matilda Sorrel, and everything to do with the plot of ground on which the building sits. The southernmost point of the British horseshoe-shaped earthen fortifications during the Siege of Savannah during the Revolutionary War were located in what was later developed into Madison Square, very close to (and possibly sited on) the Sorrel-Weed House’s current location. This ill-conceived assault in October of 1779 was, according to many historians, the bloodiest hour of the entire American Revolution, with well over a thousand casualties recorded.

If the paranormal occurrences in the house are real, perhaps the cause has been misidentified. Guides who tell the erroneous Sorrel ‘affair and suicide’ story because it contains tawdry thrills are omitting, either through their own ignorance or apathy, a great story which both literally and figuratively changed the landscape of Savannah.

If you enjoyed this preview, there's a lot more where that came from! Check out over 40 ghost stories and over 60 photos of Savannah's most haunted locations, all collected in handy book form by yours truly!

James Caskey

Haunted Savannah: America's Most Spectral City