Mary Rogers

Mary Cecilia Rogers (born c. 1820 – found dead July 28, 1841) was an American murder victim whose story became a national sensation.

Rogers was a noted beauty who worked in a New York tobacco store, which attracted the custom of many distinguished men, clearly on her account. When her body was found in the East River, she was assumed to have been the victim of gang violence. But one witness swore that she was dumped after a failed abortion attempt, while her boyfriend’s suicide-note suggested possible involvement on his part. Rogers’ death remains unexplained. She inspired Edgar Allan Poe's pioneering detective story "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt".

Mary Rogers was probably born in 1820 in Lyme, Connecticut, though her birth records have not survived. Mary Rogers was a beautiful woman who grew up as the only child of her widowed mother. At the age of twenty, Mary lived in the boarding house that was run by her mother, although it was her amazing beauty that made her the talk of the neighborhood. Her father died in a steamboat explosion when she was 17 years old and she took a job as a clerk in a tobacco shop owned by John Anderson in New York City. Anderson paid her a generous wage in part because her physical attractiveness brought in many customers. One customer wrote that he spent an entire afternoon at the store only to exchange "teasing glances" with her. Another admirer published a poem in the New York Herald referring to her heaven-like smile and her star-like eyes. Some of her customers included notable literary figures James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and Fitz-Greene Halleck.

On October 5, 1838, the newspaper New York Sun reported that "Miss Mary Cecilia Rogers" had disappeared from her home. Her mother Phoebe said she found a suicide note which the local coroner analyzed and said revealed a "fixed and unalterable determination to destroy herself". The next day, however, the Times and Commercial Intelligence reported that the disappearance was a hoax and that Rogers only went to visit a friend in Brooklyn. The Sun had previously published a story known as the Great Moon Hoax in 1835, causing controversy. Some suggested this return was actually the hoax, evidenced by Rogers's failure to return to work immediately. When she finally resumed working at the tobacco shop, one newspaper suggested the whole event was a publicity stunt managed by Anderson.

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