History & local legend
Harriton’s family burial ground in Bryn Mawr is the setting for a legend about an enslaved woman called Tuggy. The Harrison family held enslaved people at the estate, and later tales imagined supernatural revenge against the household.
In one version, Tuggy entered the cemetery at night to raise a dead child. In another, she intended to cast a spell on the Harrisons. She carried a wooden stake and drove it into the grave, then tried to stand.
Something pulled at her skirt. Believing that the buried child had seized her, she panicked and, the story says, died of fright. The object holding her was her own stake, which she had accidentally driven through the hem of her dress.
