ep 5. May Woolsey - The Trunk Under the Stairs
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The very interesting history of a long forgotten trunk and what was preserved within.
It was 1979, a man named Ed Duffy, a carpenter, had bought an old home in Sacramento and was working on fixing it up. under the staircase, he happened upon an old trunk and when he opened it he was astonished at what he found.
Inside this trunk were over 600 items. Some were pictures, some newspaper clippings, some clothes, some marbles, some dolls, a hand fan, a sketchbook, cards, and schoolbooks among other things.
Duffy contacted a museum guy who checked it out and found this trunk was from the Woolsey family. the stuff inside had to do with a young girl who died at just 12 years old named May Hollister Woolsey.
The Woolsey family was fairly upper class within the Sacramento area, they knew the Crockers (the people behind the Crocker Art Museum in Downtown Sac) Mr. Woolsey's name was Luther. He was from New York, his family ran the Woolsey Wheel Company in Sandusky, Ohio. One day he decided to come to Sacramento and worked in the railroad industry starting as a machinist. He bought the house where the trunk was found in 1866.
Not much is known about the family, and even less is known about May.
She seemed to like to draw, she had dolls and likely played with the marbles that were found in the trunk. She may have been a reader given all the books in the trunk and she probably enjoyed little hobbies like sewing and quilting since there were quite a bit of quilting squares found.
Way Woolsey's cause of death is not certain either, some sources say she died of the flu, some say she got measles which brought about Encephalitis (brain inflammation) or she got a bug bite and caught Encephalitis from it. Either way, it was fairly sudden, within just a couple of days from healthy to deceased.
Now, this was the late 1800s, she died in September of 1879 so this was the middle of the Victorian era. This is the period when death and the spirit world became very popular. Satanic things like seances and mediums were extremely popular and captured the attention of grief-stricken people.
One grief-stricken person was Mary Woolsey, May’s mother. She could not believe her daughter was dead, it happened so suddenly. There was no way to prepare for such a thing.
“Died, in this city, September 21. May Hollister, only daughter of Luther S. and Mary E Woolsey, aged 12 years 10 months and 8 days. Friends and acquaintances are respectfully invited to attend the funeral which will take place from the residence of the parents tomorrow 3 o clock.”
The next day after the funeral, the evening newspaper went out. In it was an ad for a medium.
If you don’t know what a medium is, it’s someone who claims to have the ability to speak to the dead and will preform this feat for a fee…
Now, Mary paid the medium and we don’t know how often she went but I would imagine she went quite a bit. but we simply don't know.
(This letter I am about to share with you was mentioned in the newspaper when the trunk was found in 1979 but nowadays is said to never have existed…
The medium wrote this letter, claiming it to be from May.
Dear Mama
I am so happy as I did write to to you and say I was happy. Now mama dear, do not weep for me. I am not dead, only gone to wait your coming... oh what pleasure there is in spirit life. No one can tell... an everlasting life of pleasure where we know no sorrow. You will outlive this. Your mission on Earth is not done yet.
From your darling May
Of course, things like this lead to ghost stories, and there are some.
Some say that after the trunk was opened, within the house you would randomly hear screams and things would go missing or would fly across the room.
Some say that you can feel her presence at the gravesite.
Today her trunk and some of the stuff inside are on display at the Sacramento history museum in old Sac. up on the second floor.
Public Service Announcement
If you have lost someone, know that you cannot contact them from beyond the grave. It is a simple fact of life. When a person dies they will go to one of 2 places… Those that have been saved by the blood of Jesus Christ by faith will go to heaven, those that haven’t will go to hell it’s that simple and you cannot talk to them. For one, it's impossible and it’s also called necromancy which is satanic.
When you go to a medium or a séance you don’t talk to the dead, you are talking to a demonic spirit who is pretending to be your loved one. The same thing goes for ghosts. You aren’t seeing or feeling the dead, you are playing with devils.
This is a history show so I'll leave it at that but I just had to make that point.
May Woolsey was a little girl of 12 years old, she died in the 1870s and a “time capsule” full of a bunch of her things was found in 1979 about 100 years after her death. We don’t know much about the family but we do know that May was the only child that we know of.
(Though I found some sources that said Luther had a grandchild which would mean they may have had either another son or daughter or maybe had a previous marriage, I found some sources saying may be their only daughter but I could not find any potential brother anywhere.)
Parents Luther and Mary were semi-upper class people in their day. Luther was a railroad man who came from a family that ran the Woolsey wheel company in Sandusky, Ohio. (The factory burned down in 1902. ) Mary and Luther are both buried in Sacramento right next to May so it’s unlikely they left Sacramento. Luther died in his 80s and Mary died in her 60s. May died at 12, when she died her mom, Mary was about 47, and her dad, Luther was about 50.
To know who May was, you would have to use your imagination, a little girl who went to school, sewed, played marbles and liked to draw.
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