Elizabeth Polly
American ghost
Elizabeth Polly is traditionally
the name of a beloved hospital matron at Fort Hays, Kansas, an "angel of mercy" during the cholera outbreak of 1867 who also died of the disease. Local legend has it that her ghost is still seen walking the area.
Service and death
In 1867, Fort Hays was established on a low slope south of Big Creek, its role being to provide security for the Smoky Hill Trail. For the most part, the "fort" was still just a bivouac of hundreds of tents in the late summer of 1867 when it became the center of a war with the plains tribes over the construction of the Kansas Pacific Railway parallel to the trail.
Ephraim Edward Polly was a Civil War veteran who enlisted in the 1st Colorado Cavalry Regiment on Sept 11, 1861. Ephraim separated from the Army on Aug 23, 1865, and then, around age 24-25, reenlisted as a hospital steward, or male nurse. He served in that position in the early months of the U.S. Army encampment at the newly established Fort Hays.
With the maiden name Decker, Elizabeth is identified as Ephraim Polly's wife from a c. 1864 marriage. As would be common for wives of hospital stewards, Elizabeth served as a hospital matron.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Elizabeth Polly” as american ghost. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as american ghost. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5363365. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1867, 1861, 1865 and 1864.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Elizabeth Polly” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.