‘Turning Angel’ Statue

On March 14, 1908, a gas explosion in the basement of the Natchez Drug Company killed five young female employees—the youngest was only 12 years old—and caused the prominent brick structure to collapse. The victims’ tombstones are marked with only their last names.

There is, however, an additional monument to the dead workers. Their former employer was so distraught by the explosion that he paid for the women’s burial plots and commissioned this stone angel to stand over their modest graves.