Draft:Clara Robertson Zent
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| Submission declined on 31 August 2025 by Reading Beans (talk). This submission reads more like an essay than an encyclopedia article. Submissions should summarise information in secondary, reliable sources and not contain opinions or original research. Please write about the topic from a neutral point of view in an encyclopedic manner. Declined by Reading Beans 36 days ago. | |
Comment: There are lots of unsourced statements on this article about a person, which is problematic for Wikipedia. Either source these statements or remove them and we could look at accepting this. 
– Meena • 09:30, 2 October 2025 (UTC)
Clara Robertson Zent | |
|---|---|
| Born | Clara Robertson unknown 1857 |
| Died | 1883 (aged 25–26) Arkansas |
| Resting place | Elmwood Cemetery (Memphis, Tennessee) |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation |
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| Known for |
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| Spouse | John Zent |
| Parents |
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Clara Zent (née Robertson; 1857 – 1883), rose to fame as an adolescent in Reconstruction era Memphis when, as a day student at the Brinkley Female College in Memphis, Tennessee, she reported seeing a ghost in February of 1871. Allegedly, the ghostly apparition of a little girl of approximately eight years of age appeared to Clara multiple times, and was reported widely in the local press before becoming a national sensation.[1] In the first breaking newspaper article written soon after the sighting, the daily newspaper ‘’The Daily Memphis Avalanche’’ described the ghost as having "a sad expression" and wearing a "tattered dress of faded pink, which was partly covered in a green and slimy mould."[2] Accounts of the period say that the pink-clad apparition spoke to Clara and revealed its name as Lizzie Davie, leading to the moniker “Pink Lizzie.”[3]
The account of the student who had allegedly seen a ghost became a sensationalized story in local newspapers [4] and was a defining event in the short life of Clara Robertson (later Clara Zent)[5] After the media coverage of the initial ghost story began to wane, Clara’s father J.R. Robertson promoted her as a performing clairvoyant and medium in local theaters, in an attempt to capitalize on the Spiritualism (movement) sweeping the nation in the 1870s.[6] Her fame was short-lived, as she seems to have performed onstage only a few times.
Clara died at age 26 on a trip to visit her father in Arkansas in November of 1883.[7] She was buried three days later at Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis Elmwood Cemetery (Memphis, Tennessee), in an unmarked grave next to her husband’s first wife, Mary A.A. Zent.[8]
Personal Life
[edit]Clara Robertson was born in Hardeman County, Tennessee in 1857, the 8th daughter of J. R. Robertson and Mary A. Craig. Her father, a former Methodist preacher, was listed as a lawyer in the census records of 1860 and is referred to as a lawyer in modern accounts, although no newspaper coverage from the period grants him this title. He is also cited in one newspaper account with the title “Colonel,” although there exist no known military records for J.R. Robertson in Tennessee, Alabama, or Arkansas.
The family moved from Bolivar, Tennessee to a house on DeSoto Street in Memphis in 1868, when Clara was eleven years old. She attended the Linden School for two years.[9] In the fall of 1870 the child was enrolled at the Brinkley Female College, a new private girls’ school opened in 1869 at the mansion then located at 683 S. 5th Street.
Clara did not return to school after the closing of the Brinkley Female College in 1871,[10] but instead became a professional spiritual medium, with her father as a promoter and agent, from 1871-1876.
In 1876, she met and married widower John Zent, a man of modest means and 33 years her senior, and bore him a son, David, in May of 1877. For the remaining 6 years of her life, she toiled privately to make ends meet as a wife and mother, while her husband sold lumber and worked various odd jobs to support them. The couple and their son shared a tenement with unknown other roommates in unit 38 of a building in the Market Street Slums,[11] a low-income housing project in the notoriously rough Pinch District, Memphis.
Clara died at age 26 of unknown causes on a visit to her widowed father in Wittsburg, Arkansas. Her only child David Zent lived to age 69, and died in Memphis of a coronary attack in 1940. Clara, John Zent, and David Zent are buried in the Fowler section of Elmwood Cemetery (Memphis, Tennessee).
Career in Mediumship
[edit]The Memphis newsletter The Public Ledger wrote as early as March 1871—just weeks after the February incident at the Brinkley College— that “the ghost reporter” of ‘’The Daily Memphis Avalanche’’ declared Clara Robertson to be a “full-fledged writing medium and clairvoyant,” and that “she sees other spirits…with eyes closed while she is in a state of trance.”
Clara’s father J.R. Robertson self-published a compilation of the story, as he called it, “containing the entire correspondence, proof of the finding and capture of the jar, its contents and captors, as seen by the medium” in May of 1871. The title of the booklet was ‘’’The Brinkley Female College GHOST STORY: The Finding of The Mysterious Jar, Its Opening and Contents. A Thrilling Narrative, Based Upon Facts.’’’(cite link) He offered these pamphlets for sale from an office location at 53 Union St., as well as “the principal news stands and book stores” in the city for 30¢ apiece.(x) This pamphlet, along with multiple onstage appearances by Clara (often with her father onstage as her spokesperson and guardian), led to years of both local and national notoriety as a Spiritualist.
Clara’s only known stage performances were:
° Monday, 1 May 1871, Miss Clara Robertson appeared onstage at the Greenlaw Opera House. The event was promoted as an “Inspirational Lecture,” and the show’s advertisement described the event as follows: Miss Clara Robertson has kindly consented to appear upon this occasion in her TRANCE STATE (emphasis in original), in which a most angelic expression possesses her, beyond the power of language to describe. Admission, 75¢.
° Wednesday, 18 October 1871, Miss Clara Robertson “of Brinkley ghost immortality,” was reported in the Memphis Daily Appeal in a review the following day. The event took place at the Assembly Hall, with a performer known as Professor Von Vleck, a so-called “medium detective.” The concept of this onstage battle was a popular format in the 19th century, in which one performer attempted to debunk the supernatural claims of the other. In this performance, Von Vleck used iron rings and other props to challenge the spirits, and Clara's alleged spiritual power.[12]
Clara also offered séances and mediumship services both independently and with a colleague known as Miss Crawford, a “natural clairvoyant and healer,” at No 2 Huling Street, a residence overlooking the Chickasaw Bluffs in downtown Memphis. These services were advertised in ‘’The Daily Memphis Avalanche’’.[13]
References
[edit]- ^ Platt, R. Eric (11 February 2022). "A Ghostly Closure? The Strange History of Brinkley Female College, Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism, and the Terminal Effects of Sensationalist Journalism". Journal of Curriculum Studies Research. 4 (1): 58.
- ^ "Ghost Sighting at the Brinkley Female College". No. The Memphis Daily Avalanche. The Memphis Daily Avalanche. 21 February 1871. Retrieved 29 August 2025.
- ^ Robertson, JR (1871). "The Brinkley Female College ghost story [electronic resource] : the finding of the mysterious jar, its opening and contents ; a thrilling narrative, based upon facts / by J.R. Robertson". The Library Company of Philadelphia.
- ^ Cunningham, Laura (2009). Haunted Memphis. Haunted America. p. 13. ISBN 9781596297128.
- ^ Platt, R. Eric (11 February 2022). "A Ghostly Closure? The Strange History of Brinkley Female College, Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism, and the Terminal Effects of Sensationalist Journalism". Journal of Curriculum Studies Research. 4 (1): 58-75.
- ^ "Inspirational and Religious Lecture". The Public Ledger. The Public Ledger. 1 May 1871. Retrieved 29 August 2025.
- ^ "Obituary for the wife of Mr John Zent". Vol. 1. Public Ledger (Memphis, Tennessee). Public Ledger (Memphis, Tennessee). 10 November 1883. Retrieved 29 August 2025.
- ^ "Elmwood Cemetery Burial Search". Elmwood Cemetery. Elmwood Cemetery Memphis.
- ^ Robertson, JR (1871). The Brinkley Female College ghost story [electronic resource] : the finding of the mysterious jar, its opening and contents ; a thrilling narrative, based upon facts (1 ed.). Memphis, Tennessee: C. Floyd & Co. p. 36.
- ^ "Brinkley Female College building, Memphis, TN, 1972". University of Memphis Digital Commons. 2 July 2021.
- ^ "Census Record 1880: John and Clara Zent". Ancestry.com.
- ^ "The Spiritualists". The Memphis Daily Appeal. The Memphis Daily Appeal. 19 October 1871.
- ^ "The Clock Strikes Ten!!". The Daily Memphis Avalanche. The Daily Memphis Avalanche. 6 August 1872. Retrieved 30 August 2025.