They say ghosts don’t always wear white. Sometimes, they wear a black bonnet and carry the weight of a story that never really left town. In Palestine, Illinois, there’s a name that lingers—Elizabeth “Betsey” Reed. She wasn’t famous. She wasn’t rich. But she’s remembered, and not in the gentle, nostalgic way most folks are. Her story’s wrapped in whispers and shaded by pine trees in the local cemetery, where her grave still stands a little apart from the rest. Betsey Reed was a midwife. She knew herbs, healing, and old ways most people back then didn’t understand—or feared. She had a husband, Leonard, and a reputation that hung just heavy enough to make people suspicious when things went wrong. In 1844, her husband, Leonard Reed died. They said it was poison that had killed him. And they accused Betsey of doing it. She was accused of slipping arsenic into his sassafras tea. The townspeople—gripped by gossip and distrust—were quick to believe it. A woman with knowledge was dangerous enough at that time, but a woman who wasn’t quiet nor submissive? That made her guilty before the trial even started. They hanged her. The first and only woman legally executed in Illinois. Some say she confessed. Others say she was framed, a victim of fear , maybe even grief that twisted into blame, she had also been shunned by the whole community. But either way, Betsey’s life ended on a gallows on May 23, 1845, in her late 40’s. Her body was buried on the edge of the cemetery in Palestine’s cemetery, in unconsecrated ground marked with a simple headstone. She wasn’t laid to rest like the others. She was set aside, marked different, even in death. But Palestine never quite forgot her. Over the years, stories about Betsey have turned her into a kind of local legend. Some call her a witch. Some say she was just misunderstood and wrongfully trialed. If you visit her grave, you’ll sometimes find flowers, candles, coins—left by folks who believe she deserves something more than what she got. Maybe justice. Maybe peace. And at night, they say, the wind through the trees sounds a little whisper around her headstone.
