10/15/2026
In honor of our Legends and Ghost Stories Community Conversation, I'm sharing something I found in our archives. We have a typewitten document sharing Mrs. Lena P. Slaughter's stories of Old St. Stephens.
Excerpted from “Old St. Stephens” by Mrs. Lena P. Slaughter
Found in the archives of the St. Stephens Historical Commission
(Please be aware that the author’s language, beliefs, and characterizations are reflective of her time period and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of the St. Stephens Historical Commission, its members, or its employees. Obvious typographical and punctuation errors were corrected in this version. Some unconventional spellings, capitalizations, and punctuations were left intact as they seem to indicate the author’s intent.)
“Lover’s Leap and Its Legend”
Such an atmosphere of Romance permeates the rustic old hills and high Bluff on the Old Tombigbee River, known as “hanging Rock” where Tandy Walker took Gaines at 12 o’clock at night and listened to the Indians plan the massacre of the whites and assisted in overthrowing this terrible catastrophe and under which is a cave difficult of access is situated the traditional arsenal of old Fort St. Stephens where am******on was kept in safety. This beautiful old bluff hands down to us through the ages a Legend of an Indian maiden and her Lover. WE will give it to you first in prose so you may better understand it as given in poetry.
(Legend) “AN Indian warrior renowned for his prowess on the hunt and on the war path once loved an Indian princess. Every night he slept before the door of her wigwam with the earth for his mattress and the sky for his blankets and sang to her of his great love –finally she agreed to marry him provided he would leap three times from this bluff into the waters of the Tombigbee more than 100 feet below. She stood above and watched him. Twice he leaped and lived but the third time he rose to the surface, his neck being broken on the rocks which for years had been dropping from the cliff to the river’s bed. Realizing too late her love for him she fled into the forest and was never seen afterwards and since this time this bluff has been known as “Lover’s Leap”.
Now I wish to give you this legend in poetry to commemorate the memory of an Alabama girl. Miss Nellie A. Nicol, daughter of Captain T.W. Nicol Civil engineer who erected _________* on this Historic old river and sister of the city engineer of Tuscaloosa—Mr. Hilliard Nicol. (* Unable to decipher this word. It appears to be “_ock_l”.)
This Poem is titled:
