By Gregg Andrews

On October 8, 1874, the disappearance of seventeen-year-old Lizzie Clark, a hotel chambermaid/waitress in Dallas City, Illinois, mystified the townspeople of this small Mississippi River community, about 16 miles south of Burlington, Iowa. For nearly a half-century, her fate remained a mystery. The case fueled speculation and gossip, and it haunted the small town as its residents searched for answers. Superstitions and reported sightings of ghosts, apparitions, and mythical river creatures were common in the steamboat waterways culture of the 19th century. When Lizzie vanished into thin air, it provided grist for ghost stories that became woven into the river lore below where Iowa’s Skunk River empties into the Mississippi.

The population of Dallas City, which is located in both Hancock and Henderson counties, was only 78 in 1870, but it was growing fast as a shipping point at the time of Lizzie’s disappearance. By 1880, it had grown to 829. Earlier, the area was inhabited by the Sac and Fox tribes. Elected Mayor of Dallas City in 1871, John M. Finch was a former steamboat owner who laid out the town in 1848. He owned vineyards, a distillery, flour mill, and a grand country estate on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi. A willowy island lay between the town and the main body of the river. The area between the Dallas City riverfront and the island was commonly known among steamboat pilots and others on the river as the “Dallas Chute.” The dividing line between Hancock and Henderson counties ran through the hotel dining room where Lizzie worked and boarded. Jokes circulated of hotel guests seated at a dining room table in Hancock County while reaching across the table for butter in Henderson.

Lizzie had been an orphan since 1866, but an inheritance awaited her when she came of age. By some accounts, she was quite pretty; by others, she was uneducated and lacked good social graces and judgment. A court-appointed guardian held her inheritance for her, but in exchange for room, board, and clothing, she washed dishes, ran kitchen errands, served food, and cleaned at the Central Hotel near the riverfront for Mrs. Sarah Parkinson. The evidence is sketchy, but it seems that Lizzie caught Mrs. Parkinson’s daughter Fannie and son-in-law, Stephen C. Taylor, in a nefarious but unspecified act. According to reports, Fannie and Steve were of unsavory character. Some newspapers hinted that jealousy might have been involved and that the act was sexual in nature. Whatever the case, Fannie and Steve became the subject of intense community gossip after Lizzie revealed the encounter to someone in town. Lizzie’s relationship with the hotel trio, always strained, became unbearable as anger toward her reached a feverish pitch. In fear, Lizzie confided in her older sister, Amanda, a domestic servant who lived six or seven miles away in the household of Elisha Smith in Durham township, Hancock County. Smith sent his son Charley to retrieve Lizzie from the hotel and bring her to live with Amanda in the Smith household. When Charley arrived, an irate Mrs. Parkinson, described unflatteringly as an “amazon” and a threatening figure, cursed and berated him and Lizzie. She barred Lizzie from leaving the hotel. With Lizzie in tears and Mrs. Parkinson on an angry rampage, Charley left, having failed in his rescue mission.

Three days later, after Lizzie served a plate of hot breakfast biscuits to a table of hotel guests, Mrs. Parkinson sent her back to the kitchen to bring out more biscuits. She walked through the kitchen but didn’t stop for the biscuits. Instead, she strolled out the back door into the yard to go talk to an old woman who was a friend. Lizzie disappeared after she left the woman’s house. No one heard screams, groans, or other sounds of struggle. Countless investigations went nowhere. Lizzie’s guardian offered a reward but to no avail. In early 1879, an out-of-town detective showed up in Dallas City, claiming Lizzie was alive. He said she would return if enough money was raised to cover her travel expenses. The townspeople didn’t buy the detective’s story. His efforts to raise money for her return failed.

In the meantime, Lizzie’s guardian surrendered control of her inheritance to county authorities. Many townspeople speculated that an assailant strangled her, concealed her until dark (maybe in the hotel), and then threw her into the river. Of course, the finger of suspicion pointed to Mrs. Parkinson and her daughter and son-in-law. Other residents believed Lizzie might have drowned herself in despair. On one point of speculation, however, the townspeople agreed—that the river was her tomb.

The first reported sighting of Lizzie’s ghost came from a party of duck hunters on their way back to Dallas City in December 1887. At the time, a damaged excursion steamboat rested on the bank of the island across from town. As the hunters neared the disabled steamboat, a ghost-like apparition in white in the figure of a young girl dashed out onto the upper deck of the steamer as if being chased by someone. The hunters heard her scream, “Leave me alone, leave me alone, or I’ll drown myself.” At that moment, the specter leaped from the boat into the cold waters and vanished below. Later that winter, other sightings were reported around the marooned steamboat at night and early candlelight. When workmen and river crews freed the steamer in the spring, they heard mournful screams as the boat pulled away. Observers interpreted this to mean that Lizzie’s spirit remained on the island. They were convinced the island was where her killer buried the body.

In years ahead, reported sightings put Lizzie’s ghost in a skiff. In July 1894, twenty years after her disappearance, a St. Louis and St. Paul Packet Company steamer was chugging through the Dallas Chute when its startled pilot suddenly spied a white, fleecy looking skiff right in front of the bow of the steamer. It was too late to avoid a collision. In the skiff sat a young girl clothed in white raiment with clots of blood on her dress. “She was rowing swiftly,” reported the pilot, known as a man of integrity who was not prone to hyperbole. “When the prow of the steamer struck this frail craft, it cut through it like mist,” he said. “The ghostly occupant only laughed a sort of uncanny laugh, a half-scream, and when we had passed I saw the spectral craft dancing on the waves behind.” Another man in a small boat claimed he rowed right through the ghostlike skiff. He felt a sensation akin to a heavy mist. Those who spied Lizzie’s apparition in the skiff noted that she pulled hard on the oars in the direction of any boat, as if she sought protection from a murderer chasing her. The stories multiplied so much that a common question routinely asked in the town was: “Have you seen Lizzie Clark’s ghost?”

Townspeople believed that Lizzie’s restless spirit haunted the river and nearby islands because her killer was never caught and punished for the murderous deed. But not all sightings put her ghost in a skiff. There were reports of shaken duck hunters coming back to town in need of a stiff shot of whiskey to calm their nerves after seeing her walk past them on the ice as they walked back from the islands on the frozen river. Yet again, she wore a white dress stained with blood. In each story, Lizzie’s eyes bulged wide open as if she had been strangled. In some reports, she stepped out from behind a clump of dead trees at the head of the island, stared at passersby frightfully, and let out a pitiful scream. She then quickly vanished into the heavy paranormal mists and fog of river lore; that is, until 1915.

In February 1915, levee workers who were digging a trench found skeletal remains and pieces of clothing in a shallow grave across the road from the hotel where Lizzie worked and boarded near the riverfront. According to old timers among the townspeople, the place where the remains were discovered was the site of a fisherman’s shack at the time Lizzie disappeared in 1874. Two local physicians offered that the remains, soon given a proper burial, were those of a female. An examination of the teeth suggested to some authorities that the body was that of an older woman. Whatever the case, the discovery of the shallow, silty grave satisfied the old timers that the remains of Lizzie Clark were found at last and that her spirit could now find peace. Apparently, the skeletal evidence satisfied the ghost of the murdered victim, too. The spectral apparition in white no longer haunted the Dallas Chute.

Selected Sources consulted: Thomas Gregg, History of Hancock County, Illinois (1880); Biographical Review of Hancock County, Illinois (1907); Daily Quincy Herald, February 6, 1879; Moline Daily Dispatch, December 12, 1894; Quincy Daily Journal, February 22, 1915; Bureau County Tribune (Princeton, IL), March 12, 1915; Ancestry.com records, especially excerpts provided by Suzanne Miller from the Dallas City Review and other local newspapers regarding the case. The excerpts appear on the family tree of Joel D. Clark and Electa Jane Ellis, parents of Eliza Ann "Lizzie" Clark.