Many people across the U.S. have heard of Bloody Mary and the various urban legends that follow her. There is even a movie, “Bloody Mary”. However, they didn’t include the actual history of the urban legend. Similar to the director/writer of the movie, not as many people have heard the story of her life in Lincoln, Nebraska.
According to an article from Geocities, Mary Partington was born and raised in Lincoln since 1871. She lived on a farm on the outermost area of the city where she raised crops and had sheep. When the 1950s and 60s came along, she had to give up a lot of her sheep, leaving her with only three sheep to care for. Around this time, Lincoln began to grow rapidly as a city. She now lived near 27th street, which had been taken over by noisy vehicles, paved roads, electricity, and new buildings.
According to Sheila Story’s article “Lincoln Ghost Tours helps relieve fear of ghosts”, she lived alone, around 90 years old, and was harassed by nearby “hooligans”. Because she had no electricity during this time, it caught the attention of many teenagers.
One day in October, she woke up to a loud car outside her house. At 3 a.m., she could only see the outline of two men from the street lights. They attempted to get into her house from her window by busting it. Not even a moment later, a loud gunshot pierced the silent air throughout the neighborhood. She had killed one of the teenage intruders leaving her with the name “old killer lady”, or currently known as “Bloody Mary”.
The case never went to trial, but Partington had to move, and her house was later destroyed and wiped away. Five weeks after shooting the teenager, her goats were shot. Not soon after this, people who believed she was defending herself checked up on Mary. Instead of finding her sleeping or reading a book, they came in to find Mary’s corpse. She had been dead for 5 weeks!
Mary was constantly taunted by the youth in the area where she lived. Because of all the rumors about her, a lot of people doubted she was using self defense when she shot the teenage boy. All of the lies about her killing kids may have had to do with the reason she was found dead in her home. No one knows for sure, but someone else may have killed her. Others believe she may have died due to her old age. Like Mary, her home is long gone, but people say on October 24, you may be able to see a silhouette of her if the conditions are right.
Joe Sylvester • Sep 26, 2020 at 3:39 pm
I met Mary once. Her family were neighbors to the Harrisons, who lived on 48th just north of Superior. Mary’s House was not all that near 27th, it was well east of 33rd in fact, just east of where Superior crosses Salt Creek. at 44th and Superior. Back when Superior was a gravel road, my Dad and I were coming back from visiting a friend of his, John Story, who had a place north of Arbor Road on 27th where, he kept his herd of pony’s. Grandma Sylvester was a Harrison, and so Dad knew Mary continuously from his Childhood days in Havelock. Mary was walking into Havelock, so Dad stopped to give her a ride. So there I was, setting between Dad, and Bloody Mary, though she wasn’t called that then. She was a nice older lady. Pretty much a contemporary of my grandma, who was a Harrison, but Grandma had died when I was 4, a few years earlier. They lived only a bit over half a mile apart, which in the country is a close neighbor. Two of my great uncles were closer to her age, born in 1889 and 1891.
Later, during the 1972/73 school year, when I was in AF ROTC at UNL, I met her great nephew and then his sister, her great niece, who were also in AF ROTC. They were both Rocket Alums too, as am I (class of ’68 for me, ’70 for the nephew and ’71 for the niece). I forget their names though, but their last name was Pennington.
Something about the timeline on this story didn’t seem quite right. So I looked her up from the Wikipedia article. She was born in 1889, while my Grandma Anna Elizabeth Harrison (first baby baptized in the original St. Patrick’s church (the one before the one that was replaced a few years ago) was born in December of 1892.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Partington