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Visitors to the Archives often marvel at the handsome figurehead of Persephone, the Greek goddess of the underworld, whose remarkable presence cannot go unnoticed. The colorful 200 lb., 5'6" full-length female figure, wearing a crown of gold stars, adorns the wall of the Archives' main reading room. She was given to the Archives in 1990 by Evelyn and Merle Chambers.

The goddess Persephone divided her time between the underworld and the world above. She had been stolen from her mother Demeter, goddess of the harvest, by Hades, king of the multitudinous dead. Demeter, with the help of Rhea, oldest of the gods, was able to arrange that Persephone would return to the surface of the Earth each Spring, thereby making the world bright with flowers and green leaves. Each Autumn, however, she was committed to rejoin Hades for four months. When Persephone was in Hades, Demeter refused to let anything grow and winter would ensue.

Like other figureheads, Persephone was mounted on the bow of a ship in the hope that she would bring good luck to the ship and crew and protect them from the dangers of the sea. Persephone languished for decades in a Yorkshire sea captain's garden until an antique dealer in England restored her. The figurehead is believed to be the work of an Italian master craftsman who carved her from a tree trunk. Persephone was last known to have graced the prow of a ship in the 1850's, when she was the figurehead of the Barque* Zodiac. The Zodiac, built at Salcombe in South Devon, England, sailed out of Whitby on the Baltic trade.

When Persephone was installed in the Archives in May of 1992, former WRCA Director Gerald Giefer remarked that her new home above the map cases containing coast and geodetic survey charts, "should help to make her feel at home."

*A barque is a sailing vessel with a square-rigged foremast, mainmast and aft-rigged mizzenmast.