seance

Feb 1852

Thursday 26  Mrs Solomon & Mrs Willard Lothrop spent

the afternoon here.  Willard & Abby Torrey

came this evening  He went into a trance

and preached  told Abby she was a sympathetic

medium  Mother & self had a nice quiet

time in the forenoon  Mrs Witherell

came in awhile  Altered some dickeys

After a quiet morning of sewing, Evelina and her mother were entertained at the end of the day by an unusual event in the Ames parlor.  Willard Lothrop, self-proclaimed Spiritualist, visited at the Ames home where he “went into a trance and preached.”  If it wasn’t a seance, it was close. Lothrop believed he could communicate with the departed. Was there a particular person from the past – a Gilmore relative, for instance – whom Lothrop was trying to reach?

According to historian William Chaffin, “modern Spiritualism” developed in upstate New York around 1848, and spread from there. As noted previously, Easton produced its own adherents who “displayed mediumistic powers,” including Willard Lothrop. “Circles were held.  There were knockings and table-tippings and experiments in the production of musical sounds, etc.  It was not found necessary to import trance speakers, for native talent in that direction was soon developed.”** Abby Torrey, Evelina’s twenty-one year old niece, was in the parlor, too, for this session. Lothrop reached out to her, believing that she had a gift for spiritual telepathy.

Meanwhile, the previous day’s thaw “turnd cold last night + froze the ground up rough”* Carts, wagons and carriages had bumpy roads to traverse.

*Oliver Ames, Journal, Stonehill College Archives, Arnold Tofias Collection

** William L. Chaffin, History of Easton, Massachusetts, 1866, p. 370