The Black Angel
Near Omaha, Iowa
In Fairview Cemetery stands a dark winged figure known to locals as the Black Angel. It was born from a dream. In her final days, in nineteen sixteen, Ruth Anne Dodge told her daughters of a vision that came to her three nights running.
An angel held out a vessel and softly said, drink. Twice she refused. On the third night she accepted the water of life and felt herself become, in her words, a new and glorious spiritual being.
She died soon after, and her daughters commissioned this memorial to capture what she had seen. The sculptor was Daniel Chester French, the same artist who carved the seated Lincoln inside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Finished in nineteen twenty, the bronze angel holds a vessel from which water once flowed.
Over the years it darkened, and ghost stories grew around it, though the eerie tales are unproven. The dream behind it is the true story.
