Excursion to Albany—Delavan House and Van Vechten Hall—Rev. Dr. Staats and the Judges—High Class of Minds Interested—President Eliphalet Nott—Pecuniary Arrangements—Excursion to Troy—Trojan Ladies—Mob Attempts on Life of Margaretta.

EXCURSION TO ALBANY.

We were directed (by the spirits) to “go forth and let the truth be known.” We had already passed through a terrible experience, and feared to make another such hazardous attempt; but the fiat had gone forth. We had debated the question a long time before we could consent to subject ourselves to another public contest. However, there was no alternative. We were compelled to “do our duty,” regardless of consequences, so far as it was in our power.

It was the first of April, 1850, when the Rev. R.P. Ambler and Mr. D.F. Coman, of Springfield, Mass., called on us for an evening sÉance. They came with an introduction from our friend Apollus Munn. Mr. Ambler was a Universalist minister, had preached in Albany, and was much respected there. They were greatly astonished by the evidence they received during the sÉance; and it proved to them clearly that their communications were received from spirits, or from some power entirely beyond our knowledge. Various circumstances point to the conclusion that these arrangements had been planned and directed for us by our spirit friends and guides.

We had been informed by the spirits that we should have a proper person to lecture for us; and were told that we should first go to Albany, engage a public hall, and allow the spirit-rapping to be heard by the audience. We did not, however, dare to attempt such a venture until we had made another experiment in our own city (Rochester). Only five months previously we had left Corinthian Hall, triumphantly indeed, but amid a howling mob. But they had been kept at bay and overpowered by superior forces, and we tried by the public, and not found guilty.

Once again we engaged a hall, at our own expense, and gave notice to the public that Mr. Ambler would deliver a lecture, and “the three sisters would accompany him on the platform.” The hall was crowded. The lecturer was eloquent and the audience pleased. The rappings were profuse. Public opinion had changed since the first lectures on the subject. Friends rushed to the platform to congratulate us on our triumphant success.

Many good wishes for our happiness and prosperity in our great enterprise were showered upon us; and we little dreamed that we had given our last public entertainment to our true and tried friends in Rochester. We did not even imagine that we were then leaving our dear old home for a new one in a new city, when the proper time should arrive. There was much and arduous consultation respecting the mode in which we should go forth into the world on the travels and toils that lay before us.

Our father had been interrupted in all his business arrangements, and could not possibly leave home, and Calvin, who had grown up in our family (a son and brother by adoption), was the best personal protector we could have. We left with our father’s sympathy and blessing.

We reached Albany the last of April, 1850. We engaged a suite of rooms in the Delavan House. Mr. Ambler was our lecturer, and Mr. Coman our business man—mother, Maggie, Katie, and myself, with Calvin as our escort. We engaged Van Vechten Hall. It had been previously announced through the papers that “the Fox Family” would appear at the hall, with Mr. Ambler, who would deliver a course of lectures, preparatory to our giving sÉances at the Delavan House.

Our career was now commenced. After all our resolving not to go any more before the public, we had been forced to let the world know what was revealed to us, and what was meant not for us alone.

Our rooms were thronged by the Élite of Albany and of many other places adjacent. Our success was great, as the spirits had promised. We received both public and private parties from all parts of the country.

The spirits had performed their parts admirably for nearly two weeks, when I received a note from the editor of the Albany Morning Express.

(It will be remembered that at one of the Rochester investigations, a Second Advent minister had deemed it his duty to rise in public and express his idea that all this was of diabolic origin, and that we, the mediums, ought to be sent to prison. But the good old days of Cotton Mather and of the hangings at Salem were past, and after the conscientious but narrow bigot resumed his seat, no further notice was taken of the good man or of his suggestion. I may remark in passing, that the spirits who extorted from Mr. MacNaughton the Lord’s Prayer, which he had been taught in childhood to repeat at the knees of his “puir auld mither,” and had converted him to Spiritualism and a belief in the immortality of the soul, would seem to have been strange emissaries of Satan.)

At Albany we met a somewhat similar experience, both in the attempt made against us and in its results. A certain respectable minister, I do not know of what denomination, named Dr. Staats, was so far exercised in his mind by the reports of our meetings at the Delavan House, that he applied to the courts for a warrant for our arrest. I had the surprise of receiving the following note from the highly respected editor of the Morning Express:

“Albany Morning Express,
“May 13, 1850.

“Mrs. Fish: I have just this moment been called upon by the judges of the court before whom Rev. Dr. Staats would have brought you, had he been able so to do, who say they would be pleased to call on you this afternoon, at four o’clock, as they will then be at leisure. Can you accommodate them? I think it will be a grand move to have them witness the demonstrations. I would call, but am so busy this morning that even——is out of my mind.

“In great haste,
“Yours respectfully,
“Jacob C. Cuyler.”

At precisely the appointed time the expected party of judges and lawyers arrived, numbering seventeen, all men of distinction. They were just and honest men, with open, judicial minds, seeking only the truth, and not the gratification of hostile prejudices. The proprietor of the house, Mr. Rozelle, was ill in bed; but he rose, dressed himself, and went down to meet the judicial party before they left his house. They said to him, when they left, “It will take wiser judges than we are to pronounce against them.”

The judges came frequently to see us afterward; and thus, through the Rev. Dr. Staats’s efforts to injure us, and have us arrested for “blasphemy against the holy scriptures,” a strong army was raised up for our protection. And this result we found was invariably the case through all our subsequent public career.

Wherever and whenever an attempt was made to show to the world that it was not true, however hostile and powerful the men engaged against us, we always—without a single exception—were brought through our difficulties in triumph, although, at times, we could not see how we were to escape the entanglements often thrown around us. We placed ourselves wholly under the directions of our spirit friends, and invariably came out with safety and honor, as they told us we should, if we but acted our parts faithfully.

Before the time arrived for us to leave Albany, we had been deluged with letters, by reputable parties, from all parts of the country, urging us to come and afford them an opportunity for themselves to investigate. Of course we could not comply with all these requests, as we could at the time only give attention to the principal cities.

During our stay in Albany our rooms were thronged with anxious investigators from all the neighboring towns and cities. We usually met the higher order of intelligences; as the conceited nabob and the equally conceited representative of the (morally) lower classes, were seldom attracted to subjects beyond their comprehension and above their sympathies.

My books of registration plainly show the class of minds which became interested in Spiritualism at that early day. I shall preserve them. They should be placed in some historical library, so that generations yet to come may realize the fact that Spiritualism was first sought after by the most enlightened and progressive minds of the nineteenth century.

I will not here record the names of my attached friends and constant visitors (with but two exceptions) of that most interesting period—two remarkable for their advanced years as well as for their high personal distinction, the Rev. Dr. Eliphalet Nott, President of Union College, Schenectady, and Mr. Edward C. Delavan, the owner (though not the proprietor) of the house at which we resided. The latter was nearly, if not quite, an octogenarian, and certainly cut a somewhat remarkable figure by the side of his young wife and their baby of ten months. On one occasion he was so delighted with some communication, addressed to him by his pet name of childhood, from his long-departed mother, that he was overflowing in his expressions of gratitude, and he forced into my hand a twenty-dollar gold piece. The not less venerable Dr. Nott once laid his hand on my head and said, “My child, I am not far from the time when I shall go to the world of spirits, of which you reveal and prove so much; and you must, naturally, long survive me in the present life; but if it shall be in my power I will strive to be one of your guardian spirits.”

This is the proper place to state the pecuniary arrangement dictated to us by our spirit friends for the support and prosecution of this mission to the world, which they had imposed upon us. Our public meetings were held in Van Vechten Hall, then the principal one in Albany. Our suite of rooms in the Delavan was the best in the house. Of course our expenses were very heavy; often amounting to $150 a week. Our regular charge was $1 each person, and, for a private sÉance of an hour, $5 for two or more persons. These figures had been prescribed to us. We never heard of any complaints of dissatisfaction, on the part of our visitors, with the evidences which they used to receive; and no language would suffice to tell of the hundreds of assurances of delight and gratitude, which were the better part of our compensation for the time thus absorbed, and for the fatigue and exhaustion of these labors under the direction of our friends in the spirit life.

EXCURSION TO TROY.

It is with regret that I dismiss so briefly, as has been done above, our experiences in Albany, where we began in May, 1850, what may be called the first stage of the fulfilment of our mission. I might fill this volume with my reminiscences and notes of them.

It was on May 24, 1850, that we left Albany and went to Troy. Many Trojans had visited our rooms in Albany, and urged us to spend a few days in Troy before going to New York. We consented to do so, much against our own wishes, as we had made our arrangements to go from Albany direct to New York. We were kindly received at the Troy House, and our rooms were thronged as elsewhere. Our success was gratifying to us all. But we were not long permitted to enjoy such peace and prosperity. A murmur arose among the “women,” whose conduct toward us in Troy was cruel and unchristianlike. They insinuated that if the mediums were men their husbands would not become so deeply enlisted in this unpopular, and, seemingly, weird subject. They adopted the absurd theory of toe and knee rapping. One lady especially distinguished herself by her intellectual antics in this her line of procedure. (Her husband was much younger than herself, handsome and prosperous.) She became violent in her denunciations. I well knew that, with the aid of Heaven, we could easily prove such accusations false. We met our combatants on their own premises. A committee of “investigators” was gotten up, composed of three ladies and two ministers. We submitted to all of their suggestive whims, and came off, as usual, triumphant. The course and result of this committee of investigation induced many persons to visit our rooms who had never before been interested in the subject. We made many life friends in Troy, and left promising to visit them soon again (which we did a few months later).

The evening before we left we were honored by a band of music in front of the Troy House. The proprietor, Mr. Coleman, and General Viele came to our rooms and announced the fact, saying, “Ladies, this is expressly for you.” He accompanied us to the balcony, where, with uncovered heads, the crowd saluted us with their hearty applause of approbation. The following evening we took the night boat from Albany, and were soon on the beautiful Hudson wending our way to the city of New York.

But as this chapter is so short, I may as well, at the expense of chronology in my narrative, anticipate a few months, to introduce here a serious adventure which befell my young child-sister Margaretta, or Maggie, at this same city of Troy, or rather West Troy, in the following month of November, 1850. It is a curious illustration of the desperate bitterness of feeling which arose in some portions of the more ignorant classes in some of our American communities.

In it we see a striking revival of the old Salem (and mediÆval) spirit of animosity against the so-called “witchcraft;” a spirit which was perhaps stimulated by the same mistaken and misguided religious zeal which some couple of centuries before had hurried to the stake, the scaffold, or the nearest pond or river, many a poor victim to the unhappy and misunderstood gift of what we now know as mediumship. In the month of November, 1850, a mob attempt was made to destroy the life of Margaretta while visiting at the house of Mr. R.M. Bouton. The mob was composed of a very low order of society, and were urged to do the work by prompters, who kept themselves in the background. Though not on the same scale of dimensions in numbers, mother and I at a later day concurred in recognizing in the riotous mob in New York, in July, 1863, features in the conduct of the men and women (the latter seemed not less savage than the former) that curiously reminded us of the terrible scenes of West Troy. They had evidently been put up to regard this communication with spirits as deviltry which it was right and proper to crush out even by taking our lives. They doubtless supposed, that by destroying our lives the whole matter would be put to rest. Accordingly her (Margaretta)’s every movement was watched, so that it was not safe for her to leave the house unattended. Finally the house was forcibly attacked; but being well barricaded and garrisoned the ‘fort was held’ and the assassins were not successful. The following letter from Mr. Bouton will explain the facts:

“West Troy, November 13, 1850.

“My dear Mrs. Fish: We are endeavoring to make arrangements for Maggie to go to another place. If she has mentioned the name of the place to you, keep it a secret as you value her life. A deep plot is laid to destroy her. My house is beset every night by a most determined murderous mob; and we guard her every moment. We think if we can place her where we wish to, she will be safe. I shall defend her and her reputation at the risk of my fortune and my life. I will advise you of our progress; suppress the name of the place, if you can. I write with difficulty, not having rested for several nights. Five villanous-looking fellows are watching the house night and day. She has never left my house unattended, which has foiled them thus far. On returning late from East Troy, a few nights past, with my wife, her sister, Maggie, and myself, in our family coach, when we reached the river we found no boat. The five men above mentioned were there, and they tried to persuade my driver to go by the way of the long Troy bridge (a glorious place for murder). We did not go, but they followed us home, and after we had retired attempted to break into the room occupied by Margaretta and my sister-in-law. They were furious on being defeated, and threw stones against the house and fired through the windows. I have procured means of defence, but we cannot sleep nights, and get very little rest during the days. They will, no doubt, return again to-night, but they will meet a warm reception, as many of our friends from East Troy will be with us. Last night Mrs. B. and Maggie went to the door of a shed in the rear together; but the fiends were on the watch and fired at them, with angry exclamations at there being some one with her. They were all large, strong men.”

A postscript to this letter, dated the next day, says:

“As I feared, the men did return last night, and broke into the house; but we were prepared for them, and they did not effect any thing. Come immediately, if you can.”

The mob increased on the following night (Saturday), and on Sunday I received five telegraphic despatches to come to Troy, as follows:

“Rochester, November 16, 1850.

“This despatch has been received from West Troy for Mrs. A. Leah Fish.

“Send your mother here, or come yourself, by Monday night. It is of vital importance. Answer by telegraph at once.

“R.M. Bouton.”

On receipt of this telegram I immediately telegraphed to know its meaning, and received the following in reply:

“Rochester, November 16, 1850.

“This despatch has just been received from West Troy for Mrs. A. Leah Fish.

“You must be here by Monday night, 18th inst. It is of vital importance.

“R.M. Bouton.”

I then telegraphed back to Mr. B. begging him to explain the situation of my sister, when immediately I received the following:

“Rochester, November 17, 1850.

“This despatch has just been received from West Troy.

“Mrs. A. Leah Fish:

“Your sister is alive and well, but in great danger. Safe at present.

“R.M. Bouton.”

I started for Troy on the first train East the next morning. When I reached Schenectady I had to change cars for Troy.

I had just taken a seat, at about the middle of the car, when a rough-looking man sat down beside me, and commenced interrogating me as to where I was going, etc. I endeavored to be civil, but I suspected him of having something to do with the mob. After a while he left and held a long conversation with two men, near the front of the car, very like himself in appearance, and soon returned, taking his seat beside me again. I had moved to the other end of the seat, and maintained my position, thereby compelling him to press through in front of me with some difficulty. When again he attempted to speak to me I took up my satchel and left the seat entirely to himself. He again followed me, but this time I braced myself up and called the conductor (who had been watching his behavior all the way), and requested him to “compel this man to leave,” which he did immediately.

There were very few persons in the car; I think not more than seven in all. It was evident that he had a design against me; but he expected to meet an older person, and was thrown off his course by my youthful appearance. He had doubtless expected to meet mother. They had made inquiries of a passenger who had taken the car from Schenectady, and who afterward told Mr. B. that those men said they were expecting to meet a lady from Rochester; but that she was older than the lady on the car, etc.

It had been arranged that I should stop at the Troy House on my arrival at East Troy. It was eight o’clock P.M., and very dark. As I stepped out of the car on to the platform, I saw a carriage standing in front of the hotel, and supposed it was for me, as had been previously arranged. At this moment a gentleman stepped up, and after a close scrutiny said to me:

“I am right, it is Leah; I know you by your resemblance to Maggie,” and motioning me to silence.

Another gentleman stepped on my other side, and they guarded me to the carriage each with a drawn revolver. On entering the carriage I saw three loaded pistols lying on the seat in front of me. It is difficult to say which I most feared, the mob or the pistols. The religious telegraphic operator had evidently revealed the correspondence between Mr. Bouton and myself, as there was no other source through which it could have been made known that I was expected.

A number of disorderly persons followed the carriage and crossed the ferry with us. No attempt was made to disturb us; but on reaching Mr. B.’s house we found it surrounded by a reinforced mob. I had been instructed how to conduct myself on our arrival. I was told that two or three gentlemen would rush from the door and suddenly carry me in. Accordingly, when the carriage stopped close to the door steps I found myself in the arms of three strong men, who landed me safely. I found Maggie sick and nearly paralyzed with fright. There were strong-armed forces for protection on our side. We had not been in the house ten minutes when several shots were fired and stones thrown, breaking everything in their way. We crouched beneath the furniture, and lay on the floor to escape the bullets, expecting at every moment some stray shot or stone would strike us. (Our hiding-room was in the interior of the house.) The mob threatened and did all in their power to destroy us; but, knowing the gentlemen inside were so well prepared for them, they retired for the night. They, however, continued their watchfulness until we left the place. Mr. Bouton’s house stood in the outskirts of West Troy, near a lumber yard, a capital hiding-place for a mob, and I am not sure there were any policemen there at that time. Poor Maggie’s nerves were terribly unstrung. She would start in her sleep and cry out fearfully, believing she was still besieged by the mob. She was too ill to be taken home, and I managed (with the aid of friends) to get her to Albany, where we remained several weeks at the Delavan House. During our stay in Albany, the identical men who met me and followed me from Schenectady to West Troy were prowling about my home in Rochester. All the circumstances connected with the affair show conclusively that there was a deep-laid scheme to destroy us, and that these men had been appointed to accomplish that object; but, like every other attempt at violence against us, they met with nothing but discomfiture.