DECATUR, Ala. (AP) — In the winter of 1954, a letter from Cleveland, Ohio, arrived at Daisy Nolan’s Northwest Decatur home.

A man wrote that he had been ill since 1947 and the doctors had been unable to cure his unbearable headaches.

He feared someone had put a “hex” on him and wanted Nolan to help.

“If anybody could have helped the man, she could,” said George Allen of Decatur. “She knew some things.”

What Nolan knew seemed to defy conventional medicine and brought visitors and letters to Decatur from across America.

Depending on whom you ask, she was Decatur’s original medicine woman, while others describe her as the voodoo lady.

One thing they agree on is Nolan is as mysterious in death as she was in life.

Nolan had a large black doll collection that she refused to part with even in death.

She also had a chauffeur, a butler, maids and hosted lavish tea parties.

When she died at her Church Street home on Oct. 15, 1960, the secrets to her herbal remedies, powders and drink mixtures died with her.

Historian Peggy Allen Towns, who lived next door to Nolan, said she had a lucrative business removing suspected hexes.

“Clients would visit or write requesting assistance with a number of issues,” Towns said.

People sought Nolan’s help “casting or breaking spells from various illnesses, hexes from women or sudden outbursts or behavior of paranoia,” Towns said.

Although Nolan’s remedies didn’t survive her, some of the testimonials about her work did.

In 1951, for example, she received a letter from a woman in an insane asylum in Lakeland, Ky. The woman explained that her husband was “still a little hard headed” but that she could put up with that “as long as his treatment is better towards me.”

The woman, however, was paranoid about a cook and asked “Mother Nolan” to send her away.

“I don’t want any harm done to her but please write me something to do to run her off this job,” the woman wrote. “I am almost afraid to eat the food she places on the table.”

Food consumption is one of the ways people believed others put “curses or hexes” on them.

In a letter dated Feb. 11, 1952, a woman from Delaware apparently sent her son to be “cured” by Nolan.

“Here is the ticket for (Haywood’s) return home and for God sake see to personally that he gets on that train,” the woman wrote.

The woman wrote another letter in 1952 thanking Nolan for “taking care of my son.” She also wanted Nolan to give her “good numbers” so she could hit the jackpot. The woman also wrote that she thought a spell had been put on her through her shoes.

In an Oct. 26, 1950, letter, an Illinois woman sought help for her husband and asked Nolan to call.

Allen, being Nolan’s neighbor, saw her powers firsthand. He can’t recall the year, but remembers the day a vehicle from Jackson County passed his home.

“I was sitting on the porch with my wife, and I told her I know those people,” Allen recalled.

A man restrained in the vehicle was Loyd Mitchell, with whom Allen had attended school in Jackson County.

Nolan told her assistant to give the man something to drink, he said.

“I don’t know what it was,” Allen said. “Mrs. Daisy told them to turn the boy loose. The family said he would fight. They finally released him, and Mrs. Daisy carried him in the home.”

Allen said the family brought Mitchell back two weeks later and he was fine.

“He lived a normal life,” he said.

Allen and Floyd Jones attended worship services with Nolan at Jones Chapel Methodist Church before it merged with King’s Memorial.

“She was very generous to the church and the pastor,” Jones said.

He recalled that Nolan purchased an organ for the church.

“Another member got jealous, started talking about her, and she picked it up,” Jones said.

Those who remember Nolan said she didn’t cast spells on people.

“She only helped and she was very generous with her money,” Jones said. “She was a very wealthy woman.”

By the time Nolan moved to her home on Church Street, she had a butler, two maids and a chauffeur. She hosted lavish tea parties for invited guests.

A Decatur woman, who did not want to be identified, said her mother attended the parties.

“She would send her chauffeur to pick them up,” the woman said. “She told me how particular Ms. Daisy was about her money and that she knew everything about her finances.”

That is evident in a 1951 case, in which authorities charged a man with stealing $90 from Nolan. In her complaint, Nolan knew the exact denominations of the missing bills.

What neighbors don’t know is where she got her purportedly mystical powers and when she started to use them.

She was one of nine children born to former slaves William Murphy and Julia Finkley Murphy. She married Ben Nolan of Sheffield in 1924, but was a widow by 1930. Nolan never remarried and had no children. Her parents and a sister and brother-in-law were Decatur business owners.

In addition to practicing herbal medicine, she worked at the family-owned Cornwell Cafe on Vine Street in the 1940s and in 1949 owned the Cotton Club on Cain Street.

Morgan County Archivist John Allison said his family owned a pastry shop on Moulton Street. He said his grandfather talked about people coming in with herbal bags around their necks after visiting Nolan.

“My family has told me that if people were sick, and got no help from doctors, they would go to see her,” Allison said.

Nolan’s influence on the community and her wealth became known when lawyers filed her will. She had already paid for her funeral expenses and left nine homes she owned to different people. Her estate included more than 75 vases, satin spreads and fur coats. It also had a deer head, crucifixes and rare dolls.

Her will stipulated that the dolls be buried with her.

Reynolds Funeral Home brought her body back to her home before burial. Several of her dolls were in the casket.

Allen was a pallbearer.

He said Nolan had a double vault. Her body was lowered and covered with a concrete pallet.

“Then we put her dolls on top and sealed the vault,” Allen said.

Nolan is buried in Sykes Cemetery with an oversized pink marble slab over her grave.

“She didn’t want anybody to make (off) with those dolls,” Allen said.