Charlotte Spotts Early Life

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Charlotte Lavalette Spotts DeBaun Coffman is one of the most interesting people to have lived in the Spotts-Coffman house. She has been the subject of intrigue, controversy, and speculation throughout the years after her death. It is said that her spirit haunts the Spotts-Coffman house, that she was a murderer who killed two husbands giving her the title of a “Black Widow”, and had various odd habits which were apparent to the townspeople of Staunton, but yet was also known as a kind person who would treat her friends well.

Her life story will never be told completely or accurately since there is no known living person who was alive to know her throughout her life, only those who knew her at various times in their own life, and of course, those who have heard the stories surrounding her.

That she lived the longest of any person in the house is undisputed, having moved into the house with her family in February 1901, soon after the majority of the T.J. Collins remodel was completed. She did not die in the house as some suppose due to her having been placed in an old-age home until her death in 1988. And yes, she did experience multiple family deaths at the house while having lived here, first her father, John, then her mother, Edmonia and of course, her two husbands, Clarence DeBaun in 1946 and John Coffman in 1955. It’s possible that she may have experienced other people’s deaths while living in the house due to incomplete records on servants and boarders who lived in the house at various times.

So, what do we have left to write about? Plenty! There was enough material in the various newspapers during her lifetime that help to get a better outline of her other than the tales told of her today. But, like any life, there will only be an incomplete picture based on conjecture and what is known.

On February 24, 1897, Charlotte Spotts was born in Staunton and would be the only child born to John and Edmonia Spotts. In 1901, Charlotte moved into the house with her parents, and two servants, Amanda Brown, 40, and Annie Fry, 30. In regard to the servants, Annie Fry would stay in the household until 1920, but Amanda was not employed with the family as of 1910. By 1930, Annie was replaced with a 45-year-old servant named Josephine Hyant. Except for certain time periods, typically there would be a servant in the household likely up to Edmonia’s death in 1932, but none listed by 1940.

Charlotte as a young eleven-year-old girl, attended the preparatory school at Mary Baldwin Seminary. In her eleventh year and year thereafter, she won awards for distinction and “General Excellence” during the graduation ceremonies of Mary Baldwin. She would later attend the Seminary in her teen years and was listed as a freshman in the 1915 school yearbook.

At this point in her life, like most young people of the time, Charlotte’s life was bound up with that of her parents. Both John Spotts and Edmonia were prominent individuals in the Staunton community. As a result, Charlotte’s early years were filled with dances and parties, both here at her home, at the houses of her friends and the various gathering places in the community.

As a pre-teen, Charlotte was listed as a member of the wedding party of Katie Crawford Bird when she married Andrew Jones of Monterey at the Kalorama Street home of George Crawford. She would attend Valentines Day parties, assist her mother in her charitable work supporting the King’s Daughters Hospital, would attend winter parties, and summer card parties playing the “Five Hundred” game.

When she was fifteen, she would travel to Roanoke to visit friends apparently without her parents, but her mother would come to get her on the return trip. In the years to come, she would also travel to Lewisburg, West Virginia; Frankfort, Kentucky; Baltimore, Maryland and Richmond, Virginia.

Charlotte was active in charity work during her lifetime. In addition to helping with her Mother’s Kings Daughters Hospital charity work, with the onset of World War One, Charlotte participated in the fund raising activities of the United Daughters of the Confederacy Christmas seal campaign which helped raise money for hospital beds at the front line of war torn Europe. She also worked on fundraising teams for war bonds, known as ”Liberty Loans”, at least twice during the years of the United States participation in the War. She would revisit charitable work later during her married life. 

She also exhibited various talents; for dancing, performing a “Old Virginia Reel” at a local talent event in 1913 and participating in a dancing chorus in 1918; for acting, by performing a pantomime at a Y.M.C.A Ladies Auxiliary charity event in 1915; for fashion, by participating in a fashion show benefiting rural nurses in 1917. Accompanied by a violinist, she played the Wedding March on piano during the wedding of Helen Mooers to J. Frank Clemmer in 1917.

It was in May of 1915, when Charlotte would have been 18 years old, that she first made an appearance at a Staunton Military Academy event. It would not be her last. Accompanied by her mother, she is recorded as having attended a “sham battle” of the S.M.A. cadets. In November of the same year, she would hold and invite S.M.A. cadets to a Saturday night dance in honor of her Lewisburg, West Virginia friend, Sadie Echols. In 1916, she is recorded as having attending two holiday events hosted by S.M.A. organizations, the last one accompanied by a Cadet Hunt. 

But by springtime of the following year, Cadet Hunt was left behind in favor of Cadet John Whitney Bolton. Cadet Bolton, oddly known as “Timothy” and almost 3 years younger than Charlotte, was recorded as being Charlotte’s escort at various S.M.A. events during 1917, the last public mention being in December of that year. No other mention of Cadet Bolton is made until his graduation in May 1919 other than a note regarding his leaving Staunton after a visit to friends in December of that same year. 

What happened between Cadet Bolton and Charlotte? No one knows for certain. What can be found is that Bolton would go on to have a career in public relations and screen writing for Warner Brothers pictures in southern California, would marry an actress as his second wife, after having fathered a son, Whitney F. with his first wife, and then would return to the East Coast and live in New York City making a living as a newspaper published critic. Charlotte would have various notations in the social column of the newspapers after this, but no additional mention is made of any S.M.A. event which Charlotte attended and no other mention is made of anyone accompanying Charlotte to a social event. At the age of 22, it looked like Charlotte’s marriage prospects were looking down, as was that of her family in general.

It needs to be mentioned that in most of the records in which Charlotte’s age is stated, her birth year is usually moved ahead in time, resulting in an age misstatement of as much as three years. This was a common practice of the time, especially among unmarried women who might still find a spouse, but also was quite common with married women. Whether the truth of this led to the breakup of the Bolton relationship or something else, Charlotte didn’t seem to have a problem attracting younger men in her later years.

Her story continues on the next page.