Adams Memorial at Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park

Augustus Saint-Gaudens was commissioned by author Henry Brooks Adams (great grandson of John Adams and grandson of John Quincy Adams) in 1886 to create a memorial for his wife’s grave in Washington, D. C.’s Rock Creek Cemetery. Marion, a D. C. socialite and accomplished photographer, had committed suicide a year earlier. Adams did not want a likeness of his wife, but instead asked Saint-Gaudens to create a spiritual figure that encompassed Buddhist philosophy and was similar to characters from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. Both male and female models were used to create the androgynous figure.

Saint-Gaudens finished the project in 1891 and called it The Mystery of the Hereafter. Adams referred to it as The Peace of God. The public and press nicknamed it Grief, a name Adams did not like. The grave bears no name, and Adams himself was buried here when he died in 1918.

Original Adams Memorial at Rock Creek Cemetery (photo by Carrie)

Two other official bronze castings of the Adams Memorial were made from a plaster mold in 1969, one for Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park and another for the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. There have also been countless knock-offs produced by artists working from photographs or by sneaking into Rock Creek Cemetery at night to make a quick plaster mold. The first and most famous of these originally resided in Baltimore’s Druid Ridge Cemetery at the family tomb of General Felix Angus. This statue by Eduard Pausch is known as the Black Aggie, and it is a near-duplicate of Saint-Gaudens’ sculpture.

When Angus purchased the statue in 1909, he may or may not have known of its origin. Augusta Saint-Gaudens (Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ wife) wrote Angus a nasty letter, to which he responded that he had no idea it was an unauthorized copy. Augusta suggested that he remove the sculpture and sue the dealer who sold it to him. He took some of her advice—he sued and won $4,500, but he never removed the sculpture.

In the ensuing years, the Black Aggie became the central figure in popular ghost stories, and so many people were traipsing through the cemetery at night to see it that descendants of Angus agreed to remove the sculpture, donating it to the Smithsonian Institute in 1967. It was put into storage at the National Museum of American Art and was never displayed. It eventually ended up in the rear courtyard of the Cutts-Madison House in Washington, D. C., where it can still be seen today.

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