Fox Sisters Contact a Spirit - Timeline Event
Time Period
03-31-1848
Description
On March 31, 1848, Margaret Fox, 15, and sister, Kate, 11, decided to scare their mother by pretending to communicate with a ghost through a series of raps in their Hydesville, N.Y. farmhouse. Their astonished mother invited neighbors to come witness these communications. As the crowds grew, an older sister, Leah Fox Fish, took the girls to Rochester and New York to conduct larger seances.
Soon, mediums began to come forward across the country -- and Spiritualism, the belief that spirits can communicate with the living through mediums, was embraced as one of the wonders of their times (one popular tenet: the equality of all souls).
In her 1888 memoir The Death Blow to Spiritualism, Margaret Fox confessed to the prank. But the movement was undeterred.
In 1893, James Martin Peebles and Cora L.V. Scott, among others, founded the National Spiritualist Association of Churches, formalizing Spiritualism as a religious group.
Soon, mediums began to come forward across the country -- and Spiritualism, the belief that spirits can communicate with the living through mediums, was embraced as one of the wonders of their times (one popular tenet: the equality of all souls).
In her 1888 memoir The Death Blow to Spiritualism, Margaret Fox confessed to the prank. But the movement was undeterred.
In 1893, James Martin Peebles and Cora L.V. Scott, among others, founded the National Spiritualist Association of Churches, formalizing Spiritualism as a religious group.
Interactive Timeline(s)
Browse Related Timeline Entries
Religious Groups
Timeline Entries for the same religious group: Spiritualist FamilySpiritualist Family: Other ARDA Links
Movements
SpiritualismPhotographs
Fox sisters- Internet Archive- from Abraham Lincoln and Religion
Fox family and their Hydesville home- Internet Archive- from Hydesville by Thomas Olman Todd
The three Fox sisters- Internet Archive- from Nineteenth Century Miracles by Emma Hardinge Britten
The Death Blow to Spiritualism, cover- Internet Archive
Book/Journal Source(s)
Lippy, Charles, and Peter Williams, 2010. Encyclopedia of Religion in America Washington, D.C.: CQ Press.Melton, J. Gordon, 2009. Melton's Encyclopedia of American Religions, Eighth Edition Farmington Hills, MI: Gale.
Web Source(s)
https://www.historynet.com/the-fox-sisters-spiritualisms-unlikely-founders/?f"The Fox Sisters: Spiritualism's Unlikely Founders"
Web Page Contributor
Sandi DolbeeAffliated with: Former Religion and Ethics Editor, The San Diego Union-Tribune
