10/02/2026
Happy October!
Berrien County is full of spooky history. The Beeson Mansion on Bond St. in Niles is home to one of our local tales.
The story goes like this. When Harriet Beeson’s baby died in 1870, the grieving mother would visit him in the mausoleum and rock him to sleep, keeping a candle lit because he was afraid of the dark. She would cradle him, bathe him, even feed him, as if he were still alive. She did this every night until the little boy’s body was so badly decomposed that his eyes fell out of his head. Harriet, driven mad, was sent off to a mental hospital where she died years later. They say at night you can hear sobbing at the Beeson Mausoleum, and sometimes you can see a ghost of a child coming out of the mist.
When Niles resident Strother Beeson built the mausoleum across from his Greek Revival home on Bond Street for his deceased mother, he had no idea of the stories that would be associated with it 150 years into the future. But as with all good ghost stories, the truth is clouded by the myths. And the Beeson Mausoleum is where reality and the paranormal intertwine.
The Beeson family goes back to the days of America’s founding. Strother’s great great great great grandfather Edward Beeson Sr. came to the new world around the time of the birth of his son in 1684. Strother’s father Jacob Henry Beeson and mother Judith Ann Broughton married in Pennsylvania in 1806. Judith was the daughter of Sergeant Major William Broughton, who fought in the 11th Virginia Regiment under George Washington in the Revolutionary War. He was injured by a bayonet in the Battle of Brandywine, at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania on September 11, 1777. The American Continental army lost that battle, and Broughton suffered a stab wound to the arm, thorax, and lungs, which disabled him for the rest of his life. He died in West Virginia in 1789, when his daughter Judith was only 5-years-old.
After marrying Jacob Henry in 1806, Judith bore him five children, four boys and a girl. Jacob Henry died in 1820. He was fifty-years-old and she was just 35. Ancestry.com indicates that Judith married again two years later, to a man named John F. Lewis, son of Isaac Lewis, who died just two years after their marriage. At some point in the following years Judith and her children came to Niles, Michigan, possibly around the same time as her first born son Jacob set up shop in Col. Huston’s tavern, selling goods in the early 1830’s. He later went into business with his brother William Broughton Beeson. In 1837, Judith’s third son Job John Beeson died in Niles at the age of 23, probably of consumption. He was originally buried in the Lacey Cemetery and later moved to the Beeson Mausoleum. His marker lies flat outside the vault in the yard that’s fenced in with stone.
Meanwhile, youngest son Strother, a lawyer, was dabbling in real estate, buying bonds, and amassing a small fortune. When Strother came west, he first resided in South Bend, where he married Mary Withrow in 1841. They had a son, William Withrow Beeson, born on December 14, 1842. Mary died in childbirth with their second son, also named William, in 1844, and they were buried in the same casket together. Findagrave lists Mary Withrow as being interred in the Beeson Mausoleum, as does a June 8, 1939 article in the South Bend Tribune entitled, “Beeson Mausoleum Keeps Family Together in Death.” But most likely they were first interred in South Bend before being moved to the mausoleum after it was built in the late 1860s.
Mother Judith Ann Nelson lived with her youngest son Strother, according to both the 1850 and 1860 Census. He’d bought the Greek Revival Mansion on Bond Street, which had been built for distiller William H. McCumber in 1847. Legend has it that the house was built with a wh***ey bottle, a gold coin, and a Bible in its cornerstone. And despite the large number of rooms (publications numbered them between ten and twenty-two), the Strother Beeson family was relatively small. After the death of his first wife, Strother married again, to Mary Margaret Miller, and they had a son, Jacob Miller Beeson. But she’d already separated from Strother by 1850 and taken her young son back to Pennsylvania. Strother’s grown son from his first marriage, William Withrow Beeson, married Harriet Sophia Bacon in 1867, two years before his grandmother Judith died at the age of 84, in March of 1869. Strother built the mausoleum for her inside the walled family cemetery across the street, and her name is etched along the top of the structure.
As one door closes, another opens, and the Beeson family soon welcomed a new family member into their home. Job Withrow Beeson, William and Harriet’s first born son was born just months later, on May 11, 1869. The three of them lived in the Beeson Mansion with Strother and a couple teenage domestic helpers.
When Job died at home in April of the following year, official records listed the cause of death as teething. His mother Harriet had a hard time mourning the loss of her little boy. Legend contends that she walked across the street every night to light a candle in the tomb because he was afraid of the dark. It’s also claimed that she rocked him to sleep each night. There is no verification of this behavior in either case, other than just family history, but it’s not hard to imagine a grieving parent going to such lengths. Harriet, after all, only lived a short walk across the street from her deceased child entombed in the Beeson Mausoleum. But the stories go further than just a sorrowful mother visiting the grave of her deceased son. Family stories passed down through the years insist that she would change little Job’s diapers and attempt to breastfeed him as if he were still alive. And the Beesons eventually ran a gas line to the crypt in order to keep a torch lit all the time. Unable to deal with the loss of her son, Harriet Beeson went insane, and was sent away by her family to be institutionalized, where she later died. And since her death, sobbing can be heard from the crypt, and visions of a little boy or a girl on horseback can be seen disappearing into the night.
But history is like an existential game of Telephone, and stories are embellished more and more as the generations pass. These stories are also cited by the radio website 99WFMK and the website Ghostquest.net. The ghost stories surrounding the Beeson Mausoleum are at least based in truth, if not completely true. Family legends about Harriet’s odd behavior were cited in newspapers over time, but not until much later, accompanied by reporting on unverifiable “hauntings.” Even the mansion is said to be haunted, but those stories are usually of a “friendly” ghost that opens and closes doors, or helps people from falling off ladders. Not coincidentally these stories were usually published around Halloween time, when readers are particularly thirsty for spooky tales. As is often the case, facts are optional.
Despite the stories, Harriet Beeson did not go insane and die in any kind of insane asylum. Records indicate that she did move away, but only because of climate, and as her obituary notes, she died in South Carolina from a disease “of the lungs” at the age of 28 in 1875. The Beeson family, if haunted at all, was haunted by the specter of tuberculosis, aka consumption, and Strother himself hated Southwest Michigan’s climate, believing it responsible for the death of so many of his family members. Harriet was entombed with her baby boy the following year, and her husband William Withrow Beeson joined the rest of his family across the street after a bout of pneumonia in 1876. He was just 33. William’s dad Strother didn’t last much longer, just two more lonely years before he moved from the mansion to the mausoleum across the street. He wasn’t completely alone, however. William W. and Harriet had another child months after losing little Job. Her name was Anna and via his will, she inherited much of her grandfather’s estate. He made arrangements that she be raised by William Broughton Beeson’s wife and her aunt, Sarah Beeson. In his will, he even made sure that all expenses were paid for to spend winters “some proper place in the southern states.”
Since Strother’s passing, several other Beeson descendants have been interred in the mausoleum, including several from the Brownfield family, who were Strother’s sister Lydia Ann’s children and grandchildren. Lydia Ann’s granddaughter Edith Barker married Orville Wilbur Barker, a violinist with the Chicago Symphony for over 30 years. Their ashes now rest in the mausoleum. The crypt is also the final resting place for Edith’s sister Lillian, a beloved school teacher, who lived for several years in the mansion. According to a 2002 South Bend Tribune article, Lillian used to laugh about the ghostly legends surrounding the place. She also discredited the notion that Harriet would do anything more than visit the tomb regularly. But the legend about the gas line wasn’t exaggerated. The Tribune featured a picture of the pipe line going into the crypt that once carried carbide gas to provide light.
According to a 1990 article in the South Bend Tribune, the Beeson Cemetery and Mausoleum was deeded to Niles Township in 1959. It sits quiet and majestic, its stone walls surrounding the crypt in a deathly embrace. At the foot of the tomb’s gate, a stuffed beanie baby and an action figure have been left by modern day visitors. Inside, the Beesons sleep their eternal sleep, but their legends live on. Three lawyers, a young brother, their matriarch, a mother and her stillborn child, a beloved teacher, a violinist, a grieving mother and her little boy named Job.
The sobbing we hear might just be our own.
