GHOST 3: The Legend of Molly Fitzsimmons
Click HERE for location directions. This will take you to the Fig Barn Cafe - look across the street to Mine Shaft Antiques and poor Molly.
Mine Shaft Antiques is located on Main Street in Plymouth, California west of the roundabout on the north side of the street - just across from The Fig Barn Cafe and on quiet nights, when the moon casts shadows over the sleepy hamlet, soft cries and muffled moans creep up a once secret passageway and echo off the now paved streets. Most are safe, most have nothing to fear from the ghost of Molly Fitzsimmons – most but not all. Beware those with an affinity for poker and the company of ladies of the night.
Local legend has it that when Edward Vestor Tiffany came to Amador County in the 1850s, he was one of the few opportune miners to make his fortune in gold. Using a small portion of the money he made mining – E.V., as he was known, went to medical school and returned to build a house and a practice over the location of his once lucrative mine shaft – the area that is currently the aforementioned Mine Shaft Antiques at the Plymouth House Bed and Breakfast.
Under the house are remnants of his mine. In Doc Tiffany’s day, they were more than remnants; they were a series of tunnels – including one leading to the hotel directly across the street - kept to serve as passage for ladies of the night to slip easily to and from Doc Tiffany’s weekly card games. The hotel was on the spot of current day Fig Barn Cafe.
Doc friends included Plymouth’s most regal residents – its gentry so to speak – one of whom was the well married Carl Fenton. Fenton didn’t need to find gold – his wife was rich, only she wasn’t enough for the gentleman farmer, but we’ll get back to him later.
By day, Doc and his friends were honorable men, upstanding and moral, even by 17th Century standards. By night, the secret passage set the stage for greed, lust, jealousy, betrayal, murder and now souls that never sleep.
Doc got lucky in his search for gold and doubled down by adding a medical degree. Some were not so lucky. Not only did many miners fail to cry Eureka, but a large number were also killed in the hard placer mines that dotted what is now Highway 49 in the Mother Lode.
Molly “Fitz” Fitzsimmons' husband was one of those unfortunate men. In those days, a beautiful young woman left with two small children had two options – break into the click and raise chickens across the road in “Chicken Flat” or turn to prostitution. With two small mouths to feed, Molly turned to the latter. To be fair, Molly was repulsed by what she did, but like many women of the gold rush – Molly had little choice.
Beautiful and wholesome – Molly became a fast favorite of the Tiffany tunnel set. A favorite to all, but an obsession to Carl Fenton. One day Carl propositioned the young mother. He’d set her and the little ones up in a house with a stipend on one condition – she give up prostitution and be his alone.
To Molly this wasn’t leaving prostitution, just changing its form. Molly gave Carl an ultimatum- “marriage or nothing,” but the farmer had become accustomed to the luxuries his rich wife afforded. He could never leave her. He coaxed and begged, but Molly refused.
Carl was enraged. Thinking obsessively of Molly – incensed with the thought of her with other men. He continued to pursue her, but her reply was always the same. She would not be a prostitute forever. She was saving money and looking for a good man to marriage. Living at the beck and call of a married man was the same as prostitution.
On a dark November night, Dr. Tiffany’s sleep was disturbed by muffled cries wafting from the tunnels below. He called down from the entrance. The response - a morbid gurgling and barely auditable moans.
Lantern high in his hand – the doctor crept down the tunnel. Barely a few steps in, he tripped on a pile of woman’s clothing. As he lurched forward, he saw the bloody face of Molly Fitzsimmons peering up at him from the crumpled mass that was once her beautiful body.
He wrapped her in a sheet and whisked the broken woman upstairs. He took her to his examination room, but it was too late. Molly died before she could name her killer, only the doctor knew who it was – everyone knew.
Molly was laid to rest in the popper’s cemetery. No arrest was ever made for her death. In 1923, the hotel across the street from Doc’s house burned to the ground and was never rebuilt. The mineshaft was long ago filled with rocks, but at its entrance – to this day – stands a glass box and the statue of a young woman who died much too soon.
And sometimes, when the wind is right, soft gurgling moans and rustling petticoats waft through the air and the blood reflection of Molly’s ghost appears on the glass encasement – as the lonely woman roams the basement – looking for the man who took her life.
Click HERE for location directions. This will take you to the Fig Barn Cafe - look across the street to Mine Shaft Antiques and poor Molly.
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