BP-2026.011.1
Black Aggie
- Claim
- 5 of 5
Irreversible harm to the body, to a life, or to its continuation. - Evidence
- 2 of 5
One retelling, publication or sale listing. - Provenance
- 3 of 3
An unbroken chain to the event it is named for.
These three figures are kept separate and are never combined into a single score. How grave the claim is, what it rests on, and whether the object can be traced are different questions. How the register reads them.
Asserted
Accounts attributed to a source. The register does not adopt them.
That it caused a death in the household. Anyone who sat in the statue's lap at midnight was said to die. Pregnant women who passed through its shadow were said to lose the child. Grass was said not to grow around its base, and its eyes were said to glow red at midnight.
- P13
light phenomenon
- P15
apparition
- C15
harm to animals or plants
- C25
harm to a pregnancy or birth
- C27
death
- H21
associated with a named legend or figure
- H22
substituted or reconstructed
- X1
bound to a location
- X14
bound to an act of the observer
reported by: since the 1950s
Recorded
Established by the register, or received with the object.
File
- Register number
- BP-2026.011.1
- Entry type
- Object entry
- Opened
- 2026-09-16
- Coded against
- Claim Index v0.8
Object
- Type
- funerary monument, seated bronze figure
- Materials
- bronze, granite
- Date
- 1906–07
- Origin
- United States
- Maker
- Eduard L. A. Pausch, after Augustus Saint-Gaudens
- Whereabouts
- held by an institution, Washington, D.C., in a courtyard not open to visitors
Custody
No custody record has been entered.
On what grounds
Oral tradition among young people in the Baltimore area, recorded later. Reported since the 1950s. Evidence is capped at 2: the claims did not follow the object when it moved.
Counter-indications
What weighs against the claim. These are never subtracted from a figure; the lowest applicable ceiling is applied instead.
- CI1
absent from the earliest sources
- CI6
the motif recurs across unrelated objects
- CI7
an ordinary explanation has been offered
- CI21
reporters cannot be traced
- CI19
the claims did not follow the object when it moved
The statue was removed from the cemetery in 1967. Nothing has been reported at its present location since, and grass now grows on the plot where for many years it was said not to.
Register findings
- MT11
subject of legal proceedings
- MT12
subject of a restitution request
- MT22
access restricted
- MT25
removed from public display
The figure is an unauthorised copy. The buyer believed he was acquiring a cast from the original moulds; the sculptor's widow brought an action and prevailed. Local figures are currently campaigning for the statue's return to the cemetery.