Moll Dyer, an elderly single migrant to St. Mary's County, lived alone in a small cabin just south of Leonardtown and was known for strange customs and herbal medicines, leading county residents to suspect her of casting spells and to blame her for disease, bad harvests, and unexpected deaths. During the harsh winter of 1697/1698, when disease probably influenza spread through the county, townsfolk again blamed her, and on an extremely cold February night an angry mob marched to her hut and set it on fire. Dyer escaped into the nearby woods, but days later she was found dead, frozen to a rock, with impressions of her hand and knee said to be left in its surface. Those impressions came to be seen as a lasting curse on her persecutors, and it is said that her spirit remains fixed to the rock, bringing misfortune to those who come too close or touch it. In 1968, newspaperman Philip Cove found the rock, and in October 1972 the National Guard moved the 875-pound boulder from the woods to the Old Jail in Leonardtown, where it remained for nearly fifty years before being moved in February of 2021 to the grounds of Tudor Hall, home of the St. Mary's County Historical Society.