History & local legend
Hannah Shingle was killed with her own axe in an upstairs bedroom of her North Coventry farmhouse in 1855. More than twenty years later, her name became attached to a strange encounter on the nearby road between Shenkel Church and Bachman’s store.
A newspaper account published in 1879 described Montgomery Campbell’s return from a cider mill at about nine on a Saturday night. Near a brook crossing the road, he saw a white shape perched on a fence. He stopped his horse and spoke to it, but received no answer. Campbell described something roughly four feet high and three feet wide, with neither a visible head nor limbs.
Neighbors identified the apparition as Hannah. The farmhouse associated with her murder survives across the road from her grave.
Sources
- Pottstown newspaper, 1879, Montgomery Campbell’s account quoted in MidAtlantic Roots, Hannah Shingle
- The Philadelphia Times, September 23, 1879, p. 1, contemporary notice of the North Coventry ghost reports
- North Coventry Township Historical Commission, 1855 murder and identity, History of North Coventry Township
- Handsome Acres Farm, present owner’s site, historic farmhouse, family burial ground across the road and address
- S. M. Painter and J. S. Bowen, 1847 Chester County survey, nearby Reformed church, Shenkles schoolhouse, roads, streams and Bachmans Store
- Esri World Geocoding Service, 1525 Shenkel Road point address
