Born: September 21, 1846 Died: January 24, 1877
Her name was Corinne Elliott Lawton, and she is buried at Bonaventure Cemetery in Thunderbolt, Georgia. She was born into privilege, coming from the very wealthy and proud family of Brigadier General Alexander Robert Lawton, CSA, Civil War.
When she was of age, she met and fell in love with a man who was "beneath her station" in society. Her parents were dead set against her getting married to someone from "across the tracks", and made arrangements for Corinne to marry a wealthy man of Savannah Society.
After meeting the man her parents wanted her to marry, she told them that she could never love him, to which her father sternly told her, "You will LEARN to love him...or you will learn your station!" Time passed, and all the arrangements were made for the wedding: The Gown, the Church, The Bridesmaids, The Best Man, floral arrangements, etc. She had sadly given up, and been drained of hope.
One day before the wedding, despondent and heartbroken, she rode her father's best horse to the banks of the Savannah River, leaped in and drowned herself in a final act of defiance. Angry and grief stricken, her parents had Corinne buried outside the family plot, then commissioned famous sculptor Benedetto Civiletti from Palermo, Sicily to create her statue. She is depicted as sitting by a Cross wearing a long gown with one shoulder bare. Her eyes have no pupils, a garland has slipped from her hand and she looks as sad and lost as she seemed to be in life.
Her statue faces away from the Lawton family plot, its lifesized sculpture of Jesus Christ smiling at her back. Not concerning themselves with Corinne's personal happiness in life, they cursed her to what would have been a loveless marriage, and as a final insult, cursed her in death, branding her an outsider.