road, the one he worked for. He had a good boarding place in Memphis, Tennessee, and he was assigned to the run between Memphis and Amory, Mississippi. Robert worked as conductor, brakeman, fireman, and after a good many years passed, he achieved his lifelong ambition: he became a railroad engineer.
Robert, associates say, treated his engines as though they were living, loving things, as though the engines understood his respect and affection for them. And the engines responded to Robert Musgrove’s attentions.
“His engines could do almost anything. They seemed almost to anticipate his expectations, as though they were trained animals instead of masses of metal,” they said.
After Robert became an engineer, he relaxed a bit and began diversifying his interests. He discovered, among other things, that girls are nice. And he wished he had made that pleasant discovery earlier: Robert was already well into his thirties then.
For a while, Robert had many girlfriends. He was still quite handsome, as all Musgrove men are handsome, and his career as an engineer made him even more attractive to women. So Robert enjoyed his popularity. He had a good time with his female admirers in Memphis, and he delighted in his feminine friends in Amory. There were also a good many young ladies between those two cities whose company Robert Musgrove treasured.
He wasn’t quite sure when or how it happened, but a beautiful young woman in Amory captured his heart. It wasn’t long before he was thinking of marriage and a home and a family—brand new thoughts for him. Robert had lost none of his enthusiasm for railroading, but love had opened new vistas of joy.
Miracle of miracles, the woman he loved also loved him. When he asked her to become his wife, she accepted. It was spring, the loveliest spring Robert Musgrove had ever known.
He acted like a love-smitten youngster, associates recall, even when he was at work. “Listen to my whistle,” he said to his fireman. “Listen. Know what it’s saying? It says, ‘I’m in love. I’m in love.’ I’m going to blow it all the way from Memphis to Amory!” He wanted the whole listening world to know about his happiness.
Then, one dreary night in April 1904, Robert Musgrove was killed in a head-on collision with another train between Memphis and Amory.
A man on horseback brought the sad news to his family in northern Fayette County.
Arrangements were made to hold Robert Musgrove’s funeral services at Musgrove Chapel, the church where he had worshipped in childhood. His body was sent by train from Memphis to Winfield, the nearest rail point to Musgrove Chapel. This was before the days of automobiles, so a caravan of wagons met the funeral train at Winfield to transport Robert’s body and the contingent of his friends who accompanied it out to Musgrove Chapel.
Robert’s boyhood friends drove some of those wagons. As they waited at the Winfield station for the train to arrive, they talked about Robert, their memories of their good times together.
“Hard to believe Robert is dead,” they said again and again “But if he had to die, it’s good to know he died at the throttle of his train. He would have wanted it that way.”
When the train pulled into the station, the friends walked quietly to the baggage car, lifted Robert’s coffin out, and placed it in the lead wagon. Then they spoke to Robert’s railroad friends who had come to his funeral and made sure that these visitors were comfortably seated in the wagon for the ride in the country. Among the mourners who came on that train was the young woman to whom Robert had been engaged. She rode to the church in the wagon driven by W. L. Moss.
“She was a beautiful young woman. So sad,” he recalled years later. “I’ll never forget how she looked all dressed in black.”
Other people who met her remember thinking how tragic that she should be forced to wear the doleful black of mourning instead of the joyous white of a wedding dress.
The small chapel was filled to overflowing that afternoon with people who cared about Robert Musgrove and who grieved over his death. The alter area of the chapel was crowded with flowers, formal floral arrangements from the city mixed with fresh blossoms (jonquils, pear blossoms, yellow forsythias, and such) cut from Fayette County yards.
The preacher used the Methodist ritual for the burial of the dead, and he read the Twenty-Third Psalm and John 14:1, “Let not your heart be troubled . . .” and he talked about how life is like a railroad. The choir sang “In the Sweet By and By” and “When They Ring the Golden Bells.”
Then all the people went out into the graveyard with the preacher leading the way and the pallbearers walking slowly and solemnly behind him.
After the pallbearers had lowered the coffin into the grave and the preacher had said the final words and the grave had been filled, most of the people left the graveyard and started home. They grieved about Robert, but there were chores to do.The scattering of folks who loitered after the burial saw Robert’s sweetheart kneel beside the fresh grave. She folded her hands and bowed her head, and she remained motionless in that attitude of prayer for several minutes. As she arose, people close by heard her whisper, “Robert, I’ll never leave you.”
Nobody now remembers her name, but nobody who witnessed the sad drama ever forgot how she knelt at the grave or her whispered promise of eternal love.
Several months after Robert’s death, his family had an impressive granite marker erected at his grave, an eight-foot obelisk. Robert would have liked it.
In the years that followed, worshippers at Musgrove chapel and families who lived nearby noticed that periodically Robert Musgrove’s grave was cleared of weeds and fallen twigs, and fresh flowers were on his grave.
The flowers were floral arrangements, not bouquets from local gardens.
“Robert’s sweetheart must have been here,” the observers commented. And they told again of the events surrounding Robert’s funeral, of how his sweetheart whispered, “Robert, I’ll never leave you.”
Years passed, and the periodic evidences of care for Robert Musgrove’s grave continued. Then, as time went by, some woman in the community noticed that there had been no fresh flowers on Robert’s grave in a long time. She commented to a friend on the long absence of flowers.
“Well,” the friend replied, “just think how many years it has been since Robert died. His sweetheart must be dead now, too. If she’s not dead, she must be too old and feeble to visit the grave. She kept her promise for many years though, didn’t she?” Then one Sunday in 1962 as worshippers were coming out of Musgrove Chapel at the close of the morning service, someone glanced over into the graveyard.
“What’s that on Robert Musgrove’s tombstone?” she asked. “It looks like a shadow of some kind.”
Several people, prodded by curiosity, walked into the cemetery to get a closer look. There on Robert Musgrove’s tombstone they saw the distinct silhouette of a young girl. Her head was bowed and her hands were folded as if in prayer. The silhouette was so distinct that the viewers could see her hair piled high on her head. Even the curve of her eyelashes was quite plain.
“It’s Robert Musgrove’s sweetheart!” an older man in the group exclaimed. “That’s just the way she looked when she knelt on Robert’s grave and promised, ‘Robert, I’ll never leave you.’ I was just a boy, but I saw her and heard her—and I’ll never forget it.”
News of the image of the young girl on Robert Musgrove’s grave marker spread quickly throughout that
