Free American Ghost: A Family's Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest by Hannah Nordhaus Page A

bringing the world to Santa Fe and supplying the federal troops who stayed on after the Civil War to fight the Indians at a series of forts in and around the city. The Staabs certainly had enough money now to pay for nannies and cooks, maids and wet nurses.
    But the help wasn’t enough. Abraham’s money wasn’t enough. Julia was alone in a small adobe house, raising children among neighbors who spoke English and servants who spoke Spanish. Her German-speaking husband was gone all day, out at the store or visiting customers or wheeling and dealing around the territory. She was far from everyone and everything she knew well.

    On a raw winter day just before New Year’s, on my way to the archives at the New Mexico History Museum, I stopped at La Posada. It was a quick trip, with no time for anything but a brief walk around the lobby. I circledonce through the bar—the old family sitting room. It was empty so early in the day, and it smelled vaguely of beer. In the hallway, I admired an intricate brass chandelier, then went to the foot of the stairs, where Julia’s ghost is seen so frequently. I rubbed my hand along the mahogany banister. Julia’s hands had once grasped that curved wood; her children’s had, too, grazing the top as they ran up and down the stairs. I felt the heft of the past, indifferent to my presence.
    Then I headed off to the archives. I dodged snow piles pushed up against the curbs of the streets along the Plaza to reach a modern two-story adobe building. I climbed to a second-story archive room and began leafing through the library’s folder on the Staab family.
    In it, I found a letter from a descendant of one of Julia’s younger sisters, Sofie Rosenthal, explaining why Abraham had left ten thousand German marks to her in his will. Until then, my suspicions about Julia’s depression during her early years in New Mexico were all based on hearsay and supposition. But the letter explained that Sofie had, during the 1870s, come all the way from Lügde to Santa Fe to help during the time when Julia was bearing child after child. Abraham had sent for her. Childbearing had worn on Julia, and she needed more comfort than hired help could provide; she needed family. So Abraham brought Sofie to help. The letter was the first concrete evidence I found of Julia’s distress.
    Sofie traveled by train to somewhere near Trinidad, where the railroad then ended, and by stagecoach to Santa Fe. But she “only stayed a few years, as she felt so isolated in Santa Fe,” the letter said. Sofie wasn’t married yet; there was no reason she couldn’t return home to Germany to be among the people she knew and loved. Julia remained in the desert.

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BRONCHO MANEUVERS

    Sister Blandina Segale.
    Courtesy of Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), Neg. No. 67735.
    I n early 1877, Abraham sought additional assistance for Julia. He was still concerned about his wife’s condition. He wasn’t able to send to Europe this time, so in place of a real sister, he decided to procure a Catholic one. In March 1877, Sister Blandina—the young nun whose diaries recounted her days at the end of the Santa Fe Trail—was asked by her superiors to look after Julia. “A lady, Mrs. AdolphStaab, and her children are here,” Blandina wrote in her diary. “I have been asked to entertain them after school hours. I am perfectly at home with the children, but I have no attraction for entertaining wealthy ladies. However, since it is given me as a duty, I’ll do it. Mrs. Staab really needs attention. She is in a depressed condition, and I must cheer her up.”
    For a few weeks, Blandina spent afternoons with Julia. She must have done an adequate job of improving Julia’s mood, because in late April, Abraham asked her to accompany Julia and the children to Germany. Julia planned to travel there to see her family.
    But Sister Blandina found even the suggestion an affront. “I believe he thinks money can do anything and he