Mystery Location No. 199: April 26, 2020

This is Sherwood Forest Plantation, 14501 John Tyler Memorial Highway, Charles City, Virginia, home of President John Tyler. On March 4, 1841, William Henry Harrison was sworn in as the 9th president of the United States and John Tyler was his vice president. Harrison died a month later, on April 4, and Tyler, having become president by accident, was sometimes referred to as "His Accidency." He purchased a plantation called Walnut Grove in 1862 and renamed it Sherwood Forest because his party had denounced him and he said it made him feel like Robin Hood.

When the Southern states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America, Tyler was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives. In January 1862, he had traveled to Richmond on business and his wife, Julia, back at Sherwood Forest, had a vivid dream that her husband had died on a bed with an eagle carving on the headboard. She immediately set out for Richmond and arrived to find him on his deathbed – a wooden bed with an eagle on the headboard. He died on January 18, 1862.

Sherwood Forest Plantation is haunted by a woman known as the "Gray Lady," who haunts a secret stairway and sometimes sits in a rocking chair. It is believed that she was a governess or some other woman in the house who looked after a child.

Tyler's coffin was draped with the flag of the Confederacy and he was laid to rest at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.