Talking to the Dead (35 page)

17.
On Greeley's relationship with Fuller, see Hale's
Horace Greeley,
chap. 7, “Lover,” 108–26. On Fuller's death, see the
New York Weekly Tribune,
July 27, 1850. Greeley's association of Kate with Margaret Fuller (at least in the first year of his acquaintance with the young medium) is referred to by both Leah Fox Fish Underhill and Titus Merritt.

18.
New York Weekly Tribune,
July 13, 1850.

19.
Kate Fox to “friend,” October 26, 1850. The letter was most likely to Robinson because it is similar in tone to the emotional letters she wrote to and about Robinson at a slightly later date.

20.
Horace Greeley to Thomas Kane, October 7, 1850, Horace Greeley Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

21.
A brief but lively section on the notion of celebrity and the success of Jenny Lind can be found in Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham,
814–17.

22.
Horace Greeley,
Recollections of a Busy Life
(New York, 1868), 237.

23.
Spirit Messenger,
August 24, 1850.

24.
Spirit Messenger,
September 21, 1850. For background on the case, see the
New York Daily Tribune,
July 3, 1850, and Karen Halttunen,
Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

25.
Spirit Messenger,
December 7, 1850.

26.
Mary Robbins Post to “dear relatives,” October 1, 1850, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Rochester Library.

27.
Underhill,
Missing Link,
122–27.

28.
Information on the New York Circle comes from the Charlotte Fowler Wells Papers, Carl A. Kroch Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

29.
Hardinge,
Modern American Spiritualism,
72.

CHAPTER 9: “THE IMPUTATION OF BEING IMPOSTERS”

1.
New York Daily Tribune,
July 9, July 17, and July 26, 1850; see also Herbert Jackson Jr.,
The Spirit Rappers
(New York: Doubleday, 1972), 73.

2.
E. W. Capron,
Modern Spiritualism: Its Facts and Fanaticisms, Its Consistencies and Contradictions; with an Appendix
(Boston: Bela Marsh, 1855; repr., New York: Arno Press, 1976), 416.

3.
Capron,
Modern Spiritualism,
418.

4.
Somewhat different versions of the doctors' letter appear in Capron,
Modern Spiritualism,
and Emma Hardinge,
Modern American Spiritualism: A Twenty Years' Record of the Communion Between Earth and the World of Spirits
(1869; repr., New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1970). According to Capron (309–19), the doctors themselves modified their explanation for the March 1851 issue of the
Buffalo Medical Journal.
The doctors' quotes, the Fox sisters' response, and the title of chapter 9 are found in George H. Derby,
Rochester Knockings! Discovery and Explanation of the Source of the Phenomena Generally Known as the Rochester Knockings
(Buffalo, NY: George H. Derby, 1851), 6–9, 36–38. See also Capron,
Modern Spiritualism,
313.

5.
Diary of Charles W. Kellogg, March 18, 1851, Kellogg Family Papers, box 2, folder 8, New–York Historical Society, New York.

6.
A. Leah Underhill,
The Missing Link in Modern Spiritualism
(New York: Thomas R. Knox, 1885), 196.

7.
New York Weekly Tribune,
March 22, 1851. See also Capron,
Modern Spiritualism,
186.

8.
John E. Robinson to Leah, March 12, 1851, quoted in Underhill,
Missing Link,
204.

9.
Culver's statement is quoted in Capron,
Modern Spiritualism,
421–23.

10.
For the Posts' employment of a Dutch girl, see Isaac Post to “brother and sister,” November 23, 1848, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College.

11.
Hardinge,
Modern American Spiritualism,
96.

12.
Charles Partridge,
The Spirit Messenger and Harmonial Guide
2 (November 18, 1851): 163.

13.
Quoted in Charles Wyllys Elliott,
Mysteries; or, Glimpses of the Supernatural Containing Accounts of the Salem Witchcraft—The Cock-Lane Ghost—The Rochester Rapping—The Stratford
Mysteries—Oracles—Astrology—Dreams—Demons—Ghosts—Spectres, &c. &c.
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1852), 165–68.

CHAPTER 10: “MODERN SPIRITUALISM”

1.
Quotes from John Gray of the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
are from Mariam Buckner Pond's
Time Is Kind: The Story of the Unfortunate Fox Family
(New York: Centennial, 1947), 88–94.

2.
Pond introduces an alternate birth date for Kate into the record in
Time Is Kind,
93, claiming that soon after the girls arrived in Cleveland the family celebrated her fourteenth birthday on June 6, 1851, rather than in March as Titus Merritt would have claimed. In either case, at the time of the Hydesville raps in 1848 Kate would have been around eleven or so rather than six or eight as has sometimes been claimed.

3.
Quoted by Dr. J. B. Campbell,
Pittsburgh and Allegheny Spirit Rappings, Together with a General History of Spiritual Communications Throughout the United States
(Allegheny, PA: Purviance, 1851), 48.

4.
Joseph Post to Amy and Isaac Post, June 17, 1851, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Rochester Library.

5.
Amy Post to Leah, quoted by A. Leah Underhill,
The Missing Link in Modern Spiritualism
(New York: Thomas R. Knox, 1885), 246–47.

6.
Leah to Amy Post, July 22, 1851, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Rochester Library.

7.
Quoted by Leah,
Missing Link,
229.

8.
Kate Fox to Amy Post, October 30, 1851, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Rochester Library.

9.
Kate Fox to Amy Post, November 1851, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Rochester Library.

10.
Maggie Fox to Amy Post, undated, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Rochester Library. I'm grateful to David Chapin for calling my attention to this letter in “Exploring Other Worlds: Margaret Fox, Elisha Kent Kane, and the Culture of Curiosity” (PhD diss., University of New Hampshire, 2000), 155.

11.
Underhill,
Missing Link,
251.

12.
The Reverend H. Mattison,
Spirit Rapping Unveiled!
(New York: Mason Brothers, 1853), 161.

13.
Susanna Moodie,
Letters of a Lifetime,
ed. Carl Ballstadt, Elizabeth Hopkins, and Michael Peterman (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 157.

14.
In n. 5 of chap. 8, above, I commented on the girls as symbolizing liminality. Chapin, “Exploring Other Worlds,” and Robert S. Cox, “Without Crucible or Scalpel: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2000), both explore the unifying impulse of Spiritualism, with “the harmonial philosophy” of Andrew Jackson Davis a clear example. Bret E. Carroll deals extensively with the meaning of the
circle in Spiritualism in his book
Spiritualism in Antebellum America
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), esp. chap. 6, “The Structure of Spiritualist Practice,” 120–51.

15.
Spirit Messenger,
January 25, 1851.

16.
Heat and Light for the Nineteenth Century
1, no. 1 (1851): 18–19.

17.
An excellent and innovative work that deals, among other issues, with the topic of racism within the Spiritualist movement is Cox, “Without Crucible or Scalpel.”

18.
New York Weekly Tribune,
May 15, 1852. Ernest Joseph Isaacs drew my attention to the origin of the words
Spiritualism
and
Spiritualist
in his work “A History of Nineteenth-Century American Spiritualism as a Religious and Social Movement” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1975).

CHAPTER 11: “DOCTOR KANE OF THE ARCTIC SEAS”

1.
Quoted in Margaret Fox Kane,
The Love-Life of Dr. Kane
(New York: Carlton, 1866), 35–36.

2.
For information on nineteenth-century attitudes toward sex, courtship, and marriage, see John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman,
Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America,
2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 76–77. See also Karen Lystra,
Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Century America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), which is particularly illuminating on the subject of love letters.

3.
The Kane Family Collection and in particular the Elisha Kent Kane Papers at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia house a large number of Kane's letters and papers, and the brief biography of Kane posted on the Society's Web site at http://www.amphilsoc.org is excellent (accessed October 30, 2003). Other secondary sources on which I've drawn for information about Kane's life include George W. Corner,
Dr. Kane of the Arctic Seas
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1972); Herbert Jackson Jr.,
The Spirit Rappers
(New York: Doubleday, 1972); Jeanette Mirsky,
Elisha Kent Kane and the Seafaring Frontier
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1954); and Margaret Elder Dow, “Advance on the Dark,” Margaret Elder Dow Papers, Rauner Special Collections, Dartmouth College Library. More recent sources include three by David Chapin: “The Funeral of Elisha Kent Kane,”
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography,
October 1999; “The Fox Sisters and the Performance of Mystery,”
New York History,
April 2000; and “Exploring Other Worlds: Margaret Fox, Elisha Kent Kane, and the Antebellum Culture of Curiosity” (PhD diss., University of New Hampshire, 2000). Two other recent and helpful sources are Edmund Blair Bolles,
The Ice Finders: How a Poet, a Professor, and a Politician Discovered the Ice Age
(Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1999); and Mark Horst Sawin, “Raising Kane: The Making of a Hero, the Marketing of a Celebrity” (master's thesis, University of Texas, Austin, 1997), available at http://www.ekkane.org/sawin/sawin.htm (accessed September 18, 2003). In his footnotes, Sawin identifies an archive, newly opened in the spring of 2001 at Brigham Young University, that contains correspondence of the Kane family and a wealth of other Kane-related materials. This archive may shed some new light on the relationship between Maggie and Kane.

4.
This and following E. K. Kane quotes are from Kane,
Love-Life of Dr. Kane,
237, 54, 75.

5.
Mariam Buckner Pond, in
Time Is Kind: The Story of the Unfortunate Fox Family
(New York: Centennial, 1947), suggests that the author is Joseph LaFumee; based on letters housed in the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Chapin in “Exploring Other Worlds” makes a good case for Ellet.

6.
Quoted in Mirsky,
Elisha Kent Kane and the Seafaring Frontier,
110.

7.
Quotes from Elisha and Maggie here and following are found in Kane,
Love-Life of Dr. Kane,
28, 42–43, 46–49, 51, 55–56.

8.
Kate's letter can be found in A. Leah Underhill,
The Missing Link in Modern Spiritualism
(New York: Thomas R. Knox, 1885), 271.

9.
Quotes here and following are found in Kane,
Love-Life of Dr. Kane,
62, 65, 64, 66–69, 70, 78, 106, 88, 92.

10.
Maggie Fox to Elisha Kent Kane, undated, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.

11.
Underhill,
Missing Link,
253–54.

12.
George shows up as three years old in 1850 and has vanished from the records by 1855;
Wayne County Vital Statistics, 1847–1850
and 1855 Census, Wayne County Historian's Office, Lyons, New York.

13.
Elisha Kent Kane to Eliza Leiper, May 1, 1853, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.

CHAPTER 12: “MY DREAMS ALWAYS PROVE FALSE”

1.
M. Margaret Wilkinson, ed.,
Autobiography of Emma Hardinge Britten
(London: John Heywood), 40. Hardinge also gives Kate's salary, which is cited by R. Laurence Moore,
In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American Culture
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 108.