53. BL LV, no. 4 (April 12, 1884): 8.
54. Apart from the text of Our Nig, and reports in the Banner by others reporting her words, the only other writing by Wilson (excluding the wording of her various advertisements) seems to be her letter in the Banner of October 10, 1868, reporting upon her positive experience at the Cape Cod camp meeting at which she spoke (4).
55. BL LIII, no. 8 (May 12, 1883): 8.
56. See “Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1,” BL 73, no. 4 (April 1, 1893): 8. See also “Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1,” BL 76, no. 15 (December 8, 1894): 8, which names a new series of “lesson sheets” used by the “old mother” lyceum, “The Lyceum Messenger.” The Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1 did, however, publish “books” to bolster its activities. See BL LI, no. 15 (December 30, 1882): 5, which mentions a title, too: the “Lyceum Instructor.”
57. In this respect, it should be noted that one of the visits made by the Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 2 was to “the Soldier’s Home, in Chelsea,” in November 1882, where the children mounted a display of marching. See BL LII, no. 9 (November 18, 1882): 7.
58. “THE PROGRESSIVE SCHOOL,” BL LIV, no. 18 (January 19, 1884): 5.
59. “Public Reception to Ed. S. Wheeler,” BL LIV, no. 9 (November 17, 1883): 8.
60. One of the meetings of the association, for example, was held in Folsom’s home. See BL LIII, no. 3 (April 7, 1883): 8.
61. BL LIV, no. 19 (January 26, 1884): 5.
62. “LYCEUM UNION,” BL LV, no. 2 (March 29, 1884): 5.
63. By 1882, for example, the Shawmut Lyceum was beset by money problems. See BL LII, no. 4 (October 14, 1882): 6. Interestingly, however, the Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1 does seem eventually to have embraced using medium contacts with the children. See, for example, Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1, BL 76, no. 16 (December 5, 1894): 8.
64. By May 1886 the Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1 was also expressing concern about its financial situation. See “Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1,” BL LIX, no. 9 (May 15, 1886): 8.
65. “Movements of Platform Lecturers,” BL LXXXIII, no. 12 (May 21, 1898): 8. Looking at the Banner’s listings is also a way of establishing where Wilson lived. For example, from its free listings of “Platform Lecturers” in the 1860s we know she relocated from (apparently) a temporary location, “for the present” in East Cambridge in 1867 to “70 Tremont street” in Boston that same year, thence to West Garland, Maine (in October 1868), where she stayed while on speaking engagements in Maine, then back to 70 Tremont Street, then (in late 1868 or early 1869) to 27 Carver Street, and from there to 36 Carver Street (in the spring of 1869), then in April 1877 to the Hotel Kirkland, Kirkland Street, thence to Village Street. It is not quite clear when this move occurs. The Banner is still listing her as living in the Hotel Kirkland as late as January 7, 1882. The Boston City Directory, however, records her as living at Village Street as early as 1880. Finally she moved to Pelham Street in the 1890s (the Boston City Directory’s first mention of this address is 1897) until a short time before her death, when she moved to Quincy, Massachusetts, to the house of the Cobb family (perhaps to work as a nurse or as a family friend), where she was to die on June 28, 1900. See Wilson, Our Nig, ed. Foreman and Pitts, 2009, xiii-xiv. See also the chronology in this edition.
66. “Movements of Platform Lecturers,” BL LXXX, no. 12 (November 21, 1896): 5.
67. “Boston Mediums,” BL XXIII, no. 17 (July 11, 1868): 5 (our emphasis); BL XXV, no. 11 (May 29, 1869): 7.
68. “Test Mediums,” BL XXVII, no. 1 (March 12, 1870): 4; “Spiritualist Lyceums and Lectures,” BL XXVII, no. 26 (September 10, 1870): 5.
69. “NEW ERA HALL … THE SHAWMUT SEWING CIRCLE,” BL L, no. 14 (December 24, 1881): 12; (our italics).
70. “Movements of Platform Lecturers,” BL LXXXIII, no. 12 (May 21, 1898): 8.
71. BL LXVI, no. 3 (September 21, 1889): 8. See Mary Farrell Bednarowski, “Outside the Mainstream: Women’s Religion and Women Religious Leaders in Nineteenth-Century America.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 48, no. 2 (June 1980): 213. One way of thinking about spiritualism is to note an inherent tension within it, with one more conservative side, as it were, wrapped in nostalgic sentimentalism, looking to recover past relationships (to pine for loss), while the other more progressive side (remember the way that spiritualist lyceums are routinely entitled “progressive lyceums”) looking to embrace revision, change, and reform (to desire union). Perhaps we can do no more than quote from an advocate of the progressive lyceums writing in 1867:
The very name of the Progressive Lyceum … strikes with its teaching directly at the roots of sectarian bodies, and carries with it the elements of swift and sure destruction to such institutions.
Thus it becomes an engine of terrible power when brought to bear upon the ramparts of the old theology.
(C. A. E., “An Appeal in Favor of Establishing Children’s Lyceums,” BL XXI, no. 10 (May 25, 1867): 3.
72. BL XIX (June 9, 1866): 4; BL XLIV, no. 20 (February 8, 1879): 4. Recent studies have consistently emphasized, just as we would wish to do, the significance and in many respects the radical liberalism of the spiritualist movement, but this should not mean that, as was the case for its nineteenth-century contemporaries, doubts cannot be raised. See, for example, the Banner’s column “Discussing Spiritualism,” attacking The Atlantic Monthly for its “one-sided, prejudiced and inconsequential arguments” seeking to debunk spiritualism. Despite such “ridicule,” the Banner proclaims, “the development went forward” (BL XVII, no. 12 [June 10, 1865]: 4). The issue was so hotly debated that Emma Hardinge Britten needed to spend pages of her review of spiritualism in America addressing this issue. See Emma Hardinge Britten, Nineteenth Century Miracles; or, Spirits and Their Works in Every Country on Earth (New York: William Britten, 1884): 425–30.
73. BL XXVI, no. 12 (December 4, 1869): 4; Moore, “Spiritual Medium,” 219; Nelson, Spiritualism and Society, 3–9. The sisters’ confession was later recanted.
74. BL XIX, no. 13 (July 16, 1866): 5; BL XVII, no. 25 (September 9, 1865): 7; BL XIX, no. 15 (July 21, 1866): 5; BL XXVIII, no. 15 (December 31, 1870): 8. See also, for example, BL XVII, no. 16 (July 8, 1865): 5, “Dr. Harrison’s Peristaltic Lozenges … Piles, Falling of the Rectum … Palpitations, also Headaches, Dizziness, Pain in the Back, Yellowness of the Skin and Eyes … Liver Complaints, Loss of Appetite, … and all Irregularities.”
75. BL XVIII, no. 26 (February 3, 1866): 7.
76. “Who Wants a Good Head of Hair? / Mrs. Wilson’s / Hair Regenerator,” Farmer’s Cabinet (January 15, 1859): 4. See also Wilson, Our Nig, ed. Foreman and Pitts, 2009, 85.
77. BL XXVIII, no. 8 (November 12, 1870): 2–3.
78. See Bennett, Transatlantic Spiritualism, 18 et seq.
79. The term “test” in the oft-repeated phrase “test medium” is a slippery one. It seems above all to refer to mediums who were prepared to allow the ways they claimed they enabled manifestations to appear to be tested by observers to ensure no trickery. But, at a less demanding level, it seems also to refer to the way that some mediums put to the test the existence of an accompanying spiritual world that manifested itself, and through their powers discovered it to be real, whether or not others were independently testing this at the same time. Such mediums thereby “attested” to the spiritual world. Wilson’s testing out her father’s words moves along the boundary between these two types.
80. “THE PROGRESSIVE SCHOOL” BL LIV, no. 18 (January 19, 1884): 5; BL XLVIII, no. 23 (February 26, 1881): 5; “Berkeley Hall Meetings,” BL LVIII, no. 12 (June 6, 1885): 5.
81. “Onset Grove,” BL 75, no. 2: (August 11, 1894): 2. In December 1893 the Banner reports how more than one hundred persons attended an “Indian Peace Council” at Hollis Hall, “most of them mediums through whom the Indians manifested” (“Hollis Hall,” BL 74, no. 13 (December 2, 1893): 8.
82. On the other hand, if we do buy into part of
her Haverhill story, that which says she investigated her Milford family past, then this might provide a reason why she at some time changes her maiden name from Adams to Green. This would mean that her account in Our Nig is more likely to be a fiction, however.
83. “Who Wants a Good Head of Hair? / Mrs. Wilson’s / Hair Regenerator,” Farmer’s Cabinet (January 15, 1859), 4.
84. BL XXV, no. 11 (May 26, 1869): 7.
85. See Ellis, Harriet Wilson’s “Our Nig,” 25.
86. Foreman and Pitts propose this business period as stretching from 1855 to the early 1860s. See Wilson, Our Nig, ed. Foreman and Pitts, 2009, xxxiii, xliii, lii-liii, 85; and P. Gabrielle Foreman and Kathy Flynn, “Mrs. H. E. Wilson, Mogul?” Boston Globe, February 15, 2009. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ (accessed 8 June 2010). See also “Use Mrs. Wilson’s Hair Regenerator and Hair Dressing,” Methodist Quarterly Review 42, ed. D. D. Whedon (New York: Carlton and Porter, 1860), 714.
87. P. Gabrielle Foreman claims that “tens of thousands” of bottles marked with Wilson’s name were produced. See Wilson, Our Nig, ed. Foreman and Pitts, 2009, xxxiii.
88. Foreman and Pitts suggest Wilson suspended her business to care for her ailing son (2009: xliii), but it is not clear this was the case.
89. An alternative explanation is to note that a small but active group of spiritualists in Milford invited William Lloyd Garrison, who had swung over to a sympathy with spiritualism, to come and speak to them in September 1864. See “NOTICE OF MEETING … MILFORD,” BL XV, no. 26 (September 17, 1864): 6. Possibly Wilson was attracted to this meeting by Garrison’s name and experienced some form of epiphany while there. Equally it should be noted that there was a large and very active spiritualist group in Worcester, Massachusetts, where Wilson possibly went for a while upon quitting Milford. See, for example, BL XVI, no. 26 (March 18, 1865): 8.
APPENDIX 2:
Hattie E. Wilson in the Banner of Light and Spiritual Scientist
A list of references to Harriet E. Wilson, known as Hattie [E.] Wilson and Hattie [E.] Robinson, in the Banner of Light: A Weekly Journal of Romance, Literature and General Intelligence (retitled the Banner of Light: An Exponent of the Spiritual Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century in March 20, 1869, XXIV, no. 1: 1) and Spiritual Scientist: A Weekly Journal Devoted to the Science, Philosophy and Teachings of Spiritualism.
N.B. This list will not be exhaustive, since it has not proved possible to retrieve a complete print run of either the Banner or the Spiritual Scientist, and the microfilms consulted were slightly damaged. The majority of the references to Wilson are to be found in the Banner; consequently the references to this journal are not prefixed; references to the Spiritual Scientist are prefixed SS. We have found no earlier mention of Wilson in any spiritualist newspaper or journal that we have consulted than the ones that now follow.
1867: May 18. XXI/10: 8. “Spiritualist Meetings”: “Mrs. H. E. Wilson, (colored)” is listed as one of the “speakers engaged” under the subheadings “Chelsea” for the dates “June 2, 9 and 16” and “Charlestown” for “May 19 and 26.”
1867: May 25. XXI/11: 8. “Spiritualist Meetings”: The Chelsea appointments are restated and under the subheading “Cambridge,” “Mrs. Wilson” is listed as engaged for June 23 and 30.
1867: June 1. XXI/11: 5. “Meeting and Lyceums” column, entry for Chelsea: “Mrs H. E. Wilson speaks for us the first three Sundays in June and Mrs. C. Fannie Allyn the last two” and lists the dates: “Mrs. H. E. Wilson (colored), June 2, 9 and 16.” Columns in subsequent weeks list these dates until Wilson has spoken in Chelsea on all three occasions.
1867: June 15. XXI/13: 3. A report entitled “Spiritualist Convention … Friday May 30th and 31st, 1867” describes Wilson as “the earnest and eloquent colored trance medium” and notes that “the President [of the Convention], on taking the Chair, called upon Mrs Wilson, the colored speaker, to occupy the platform … She improved the opportunity, or rather the intelligence controlling her, by delivering a fluent speech in favour of labor reform and the education of children in the doctrines of spiritualism.”
1867: June 29. XXI/15: 8. The Banner’s regular column “Lecturers’ Appointments and Addresses” lists for the first time the address of “Mrs. Hattie E. Wilson, (colored)” as “East Cambridge, Mass., for the present.” Subsequent columns very regularly record her address in this “gratis” column, and from henceforth we only note this when a change of address occurs.
1867: August 3. XXI/20: 4. “Meeting and Lyceums” column announces that “Mrs. Hattie E. Wilson will lecture at Hartford, Conn., August 4th.”
1867: September 14. XXI/26: 5. A report on the “Second Great Spiritualist Camp Meeting at Pierpont Grove, Melrose, August 29th, 30th, 31st and September 1st, 1867” noted the presence of “Miss Hattie E. Wilson, the colored medium” and observed that her “address excited thrilling interest, and was at once an eloquent appeal for the recognition of the capacities of her race, the sentiment and philosophy of progress, under the figure of a moving camp tenting each night ‘a day’s march nearer home.’ ”
1867: October 19. XXII/5: 8. “Lecturers’ Appointments and Addresses”: “Mrs. Hattie E. Wilson (colored) will lecture in Lynn, Mass., Oct. 20 and 27; in Hartford, Conn., Nov. 3 and 10, in Stoneham, Mass., Nov. 17 and 24; in Stoughton, Dec. 1. Would be pleased to make arrangements for the Winter.” Subsequent issues of the Banner confirm these appointments until they are fulfilled.
1867: November 23. XXII/10: 8. “Lecturers’ Appointments and Addresses”: Adds Groveland, December 6 and 13, to Wilson’s list of appointments.
1867: November 30. XXII/11: 8. “Lecturers’ Appointments and Addresses” changes Wilson’s address to “70 Tremont street, Boston,” and, as an alteration, notes that Mrs. Hattie E. Wilson will lecture in Groveland, Mass., December 8 and 15; it also adds both Newport, December 22 and 29, and “East Boston, Dec. 22”—an erroneous date duplication.
1867: December 7. XXII/12: “Lecturers’ Appointments and Addresses” still records that Mrs. Hattie E. Wilson will lecture on December 22 in both Newport, N.H., and East Boston, in error. Groveland, Mass., December 8 and 15 confirmed.
1867: December 14. XXII/13: 8. “Lecturers’ Appointments and Addresses” changes the date of Wilson’s East Boston booking to February 2 and 9.
1868: January 11. XXII/17: 8. The Banner’s “Lecturers’ Appointments and Addresses” adds an “East Wilton, N.H.” appointment for Wilson on January 12 to the two East Boston bookings. Subsequent issues of the Banner confirm these appointments until they are fulfilled.
1868: February 1. XXII/20: “1, 2, 8. The State Agent’s Report” on the “Third Annual Convention of the Massachusetts Spiritual Association, Held in the Mercantile Hall, Boston, Jan. 7th and 8th, 1868” notes that Hattie E. Wilson was elected onto the Massachusetts Spiritual Association’s “Finance Committee to look after the monetary matters of the Convention” (1); Wilson also volunteers to lecture “gratuitously” for the Association (2). The Banner’s “Lecturers’ Appointments and Addresses” column (8) adds appointments for Wilson to speak in Randolph, Mass., April 5 and May 3. Subsequent issues of the Banner confirm these appointments until they are fulfilled.
1868: February 8. XXII/21: 8. The “Lecturers’ Appointments and Addresses” column adds appointments for Wilson to speak in Portsmouth, N.H., February 16 and 23.
1868: February 29. XXII/25: 8. “Lecturers’ Appointments and Addresses” adds dates for Wilson in East Bridgewater, Mass., March 1; Randolph, April 5 and May 3; and changes the Portsmouth, N.H., dates to April 12, 19, and 26. Subsequent issues of the Banner confirm these appointments until they are fulfilled.
1868: March 14. XXII/26: 8. “Lecturers’ Appointments and Addresses” adds a date for Wilson in Leominster, Mass., on March 22.
1868: May 30. XXIII/11: 2. The “State Agent’s Report” notes that “Mrs. Wilson” attends an executive committee meeting of the Massachusetts Spiritual Association.
186
8: July 11. XXIII/17: 3. Listed as “(colored) trance speaker” in “Lecturers’ Appointments and Addresses.” In the “Mediums in Boston” advertising column (5), Wilson has paid for a small advertisement to appear: “HATTIE E. WILSON, Lecturer and Unconscious Trance Physician, Rooms 70 Tremont street, Boston, Mass.”
1868: August 8. XXIII/21: 5. An anonymous note under the heading: “MRS HATTIE WILSON” records: “We learn that our valued friend, Mrs. Hattie E. Wilson, the colored medium, will probably visit Maine and the West during the Summer. She has been constantly and successfully engaged the past year in the vicinity as a healing medium and trance speaker and now has a host of friends. We cordially commend her to the hospitality of the spiritual brotherhood everywhere.”
1868: August 15. XXIII/22: 4. An article, “Spiritual Camp Meeting at Cape Cod,” records that Wilson spoke three times at the camp. First she addressed the theme “Who and what is God, and in whom and how are His powers and goodness most manifest?” Her speech is described as “spirited and contain[ing] many good points” and as being delivered “through” her, as a trance medium. The second, addressed to an audience of “twenty-five hundred,” addressed the “practical uses of spiritualism,” while the last, a “short and pithy” speech took as its subject “the general theme of spiritualism, its teachings and lessons, and especially … the power of love to conquer and subdue all the evil passions of the world.” Among those present was C. Fannie Allyn, who also spoke.
1868: September 5. XXIII/25: 5. The editor notes that “several letters are in our office, addressed to Mrs. Hattie E. Wilson, which are subject to her order.”
1868: October 10. XXIV/4: 4. “Mrs. Hattie Wilson, writing from Garland, Maine … says: ‘I have been a labourer in the spiritual ranks for seven years, and if their platform is known to me, it is no bond, no sect, no creed, no dogma and no caste. Never have I seen it so practically illustrated, either in public or private, as at the Cape Cod Meeting. May the Gods of Knowledge and Wisdom protect that spirit gained until another year, when the principles that inspired us may have become eighteen carats more refined, spiritually.’ ”
Our Nig Page 18
