Laura de Force Gordon.
Print acted as a proxy for speakers. The 19th century had a vibrant lecture culture, driven in part by a middle-class value of self-improvement. “In addition to reading how-to books on anything from occupational skills to social graces, Americans could join debating or self-improvement societies, mechanics’ or mercantile libraries, and attend lyceums or popular lectures,” as Barbara Sicherman summarizes. Furthermore, “[t]he continuity between oral and print culture promoted the dissemination of knowledge” [1]. Speeches and printed words were intrinsically tied together.
Spiritualism grew an extensive lecture network from its earliest days. Starting in the 1850s, women mediums dominated the trance lecture circuit, using the platform to spread their ideas and establish religious authority. Trance speakers delivered hours-long speeches on unplanned topics while the spirits “spoke” through them. In Ann Braude’s work on Spiritualism and women’s rights, she argues that “Spiritualism helped a crucial generation of American women find their voice. It produced both the first large group of female religious leaders and the first sizable group of American women to speak in public” [2]. Though not all Spiritualist lecturers spoke in trance, and Spiritualist audiences found a range of topics interesting — science, women’s rights, free love, abolition — delivered by fellow believers and non-believers alike.
Spiritualist newspapers tracked speakers’ schedules so readers could know when and where to attend. The papers also reported on speeches’ content (especially if the speaker was well-known), so readers could still stay up-to-date on the latest ideas and discussions. In California, Laura de Force Gordon and Laura Cuppy Smith were well-known Spiritualist and women’s rights speakers. A few other examples are listed below.
Banner of Progress - Lecturers' Appointments and Addresses
Banner of Progress was a short-lived Spiritualist paper that ran in San Francisco from 1867-1869. It commonly ran a section for “Lecturers’ Appointments and Addresses,” covering regions nationwide. On December 1, 1867, the “Pacific States and Territories” section lists a number of names, including the women Mrs. Ada Hoyt Foye in San Francisco, a “rapping and writing test medium”; Mrs. C. M. Stowe in San Jose, a “lecturer and clairvoyant physician”; Mrs. Anna Barker in San Francisco; Mrs. Wm. J. Young and her husband in Boise City; and a Mrs. L. Hutchison in Owensville, who “will receive calls to lecture and teach the Harmonial Philosophy, illustrated by charts and diagrams which greatly assist in comprehending the structure of the universe and the spiritual spheres, as also the physical and mental development of matter and mind” [3].
Julia Schlesinger.
The Carrier Dove - Julia Schlesinger
The Carrier Dove, an illustrated Spiritualist journal published out of San Francisco by Julia Schlesinger and her husband Dr. Louis Schlesinger, printed “by request of the audience” Julia’s own speech given in 1887 at Scottish Hall, San Francisco. Julia’s spoken words are converted into typeset text in her own journal. She likens the discovery of spiritual knowledge to learning the alphabet:
“To those who are investigating, who stand upon the threshold of the open door of knowledge; the seance-room is the school-room where the alphabet is mastered. It is the initiatory chamber where the facts of spiritual existence and communion are demonstrated, and the first positive evidence gained of the great unknown lying out and beyond…” [4]
Beyond the seance-room is the “golden stairway” of higher knowledge, but in the meantime, Spiritualists still used words and texts to communicate their ideas.
Sources
Images:
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[Laura de Force Gordon] Detail from National American Woman Suffrage Association, National American Woman Suffrage Association Records: Subject File, 1851-1953; Gordon, Laura de Force, 1851-1953. Manuscript/Mixed Material. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/ms998019.mss34132.01641. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, National American Woman Suffrage Association records.
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[Julia Schlesinger portrait] From Julia Schlesinger, Workers in the Vineyard: A Review of the Progress of Spiritualism, Biographical Sketches, Lectures, Essays and Poems (San Francisco, California, 1896), 16, HathiTrust Digital Library, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100128052.
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[1] Barbara Sicherman, “Ideologies and Practices of Reading,” in A History of the Book in America: Volume 3: The Industrial Book, 1840-1880, ed. by Scott E. Casper, Jeffrey D. Groves, Stephen W. Nissenbaum, Michael Winship, and David D. Hall (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 286, ProQuest Ebook Central.
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[2] Ann Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America, 2nd ed. (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001), 201.
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[3] Banner of Progress, December 1, 1867 (San Francisco, California), page 4. The International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals (IAPSOP), http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/banner_of_progress/.
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[4] The Carrier Dove, April 1887 (San Francisco, California), page 140-142. The International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals (IAPSOP), http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/carrier_dove/.