Stephen Bishop (cave Explorer) - Freedom and Death

Freedom and Death

Stephen Bishop was freed in 1856, seven years after the death of his owner, in accordance with Dr. Croghan's will. Stephen died on June 15, 1859, according to the date on his tombstone, before he could carry out his life's dream of buying the freedom of his wife and son and traveling to Liberia. His expressed life’s dream of traveling to Liberia may have been “politically correct” talk to convey an impression of personal ambition in a non-threatening way to white visitors.

Ironically, Croghan's life was claimed by tuberculosis, which Croghan had hoped to eradicate using the cave's environment.

Stephen's wife, the former Charlotte Brown, was reunited with her brother Jim Brown prior to her death in 1897. As a widow, she became the wife of cave guide Nick Bransford, who died in 1894.

Stephen was buried on the south hill above the cave in what became known as “The Old Guides' Cemetery.” According to Mammoth Cave Historian Harold Meloy (“Stephen Bishop: The Man and the Legend”, in Caves, Cavers, and Caving, Bruce Sloane, Editor, 1977, pp 290–291), James Ross Mellon, president of the City Deposit Bank, Pittsburgh, PA, visited the cave for one week in November, 1878. He heard charming stories of Stephen Bishop, and he met Charlotte, who then managed the hotel dining room. She led him to Stephen’s gravesite, “which had only a cedar tree to mark it.” Mellon promised to have a headstone carved for Stephen’s grave. Three years after Mellon returned home to Pittsburgh he remembered his promise to Charlotte. He arranged for a monument carver to prepare the stone. In 1881 a stonemason used a second-hand tombstone that a Civil War soldier’s family had not paid for, he chiseled off the original name and placed an inscription that read,

“STEPHEN BISHOP, FIRST GUIDE & EXPLORER OF THE MAMMOTH CAVE. DIED JUNE 15, 1859 IN HIS 37 YEAR.”

The stone was shipped to the cave and installed on Stephen’s grave. According to Harold Meloy, “The error in the date of death detracted nothing from the legend now reinforced by a permanent record in stone.”