The Vanishing Messiah: The Life and Resurrections of Francis Schlatter
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The Vanishing Messiah: The Life and Resurrections of Francis Schlatter
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781609384234 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Iowa Press |
| Publication date: | 06/01/2016 |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 262 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d) |
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The Vanishing Messiah
The Life and Resurrections of Francis Schlatter
By David N. Wetzel
University of Iowa Press
Copyright © 2016 David N. WetzelAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60938-423-4
CHAPTER 1
The Denver Cobbler
Father was preparing me for what was to come. But I had the power to heal before I left Denver. FRANCIS SCHLATTER
Francis Schlatter arrived in Denver for the first time on September 19, 1892 — by railroad, perhaps, but more likely on foot. He was a simple cobbler, and he was broke. All the money he had invested in Colorado silver mines was gone, and he made his way to the first person who could help him, Albert S. Whitaker. He brought with him a letter of introduction from Marcus M. "Brick" Pomeroy, Whitaker's boss and the president of the Atlantic & Pacific Railway Tunnel Company.
Pomeroy, a wealthy New York newspaper owner turned mining speculator, was the first entrepreneur to attempt digging a railroad tunnel through the Rocky Mountains. The proposed twenty-five thousand–foot tunnel, forty feet wide and twenty feet high, would allow standard-gauge trains to take passengers directly through the Rockies, while at the same time opening up rich silver veins deep inside Gray's Peak west of Denver. For nearly twelve years the company had been selling stocks and buying up mining properties for cash to support the tunnel's excavation. By the time Francis Schlatter invested his savings in Pomeroy's project, only a fifth of the five-mile-long tunnel had been completed, and its bore was no bigger than eight to ten feet.
All construction ceased with the silver crash of 1893, and "Pomeroy's folly," as the tunnel was known, ended with his death in 1896. But though he had offered false hope to Francis Schlatter and thousands of investors like him, he was a central figure in the cobbler's decision to come west — and not simply to gain wealth and fortune. Pomeroy gave Schlatter another reason to head for Denver in particular, for the city was the center of spiritualist activity throughout the Rocky Mountain West.
The belief in spiritualism, which both Francis Schlatter, a modest tradesman, and the wealthy mining magnate Brick Pomeroy discussed and shared, had its American origins in a series of mysterious rappings that occurred on March 31, 1848, in Hydesville, New York. Sisters Kate and Margaret Fox heard strange noises in their upstairs bedroom that turned out to be messages from the spirit of a murdered peddler. That's what they claimed, at any rate, and further rappings led to a wildfire of interest in the Fox girls and in "spiritism," or spiritualism.
In spite of accusations of fraud throughout its formative years, the spiritualist movement expanded rapidly over the next few decades and evolved beyond the crude communication of rapping into conversations with spirits of the departed through mediums, hypnotism, and séances. It quickly found its metaphysical underpinnings in the work of Emanuel Swedenborg, an eighteenth-century Swedish thinker who proposed an afterlife consisting of stages of spiritual development rather than a static vision of heaven and hell, and in the American thinker Alexander Jackson Davis. By the time Schlatter came to it, spiritualism had begun to generate considerable speculation about the human personality, spirit, and soul after death.
How and why — or when — Schlatter took an interest in spiritualism is unknown. But how he came to meet Brick Pomeroy is less problematic. As a highly skilled cobbler, he frequently made shoes for wealthy businessmen. Pomeroy, who kept a sixty-five thousand–dollar mansion in Denver, established his home and main office in New York in 1890 or 1891, and the two probably met at that time. Besides, Pomeroy was no snob. In spite of his wealth and influence, he was a liberal Democrat and a champion of the underdog, unpretentious, and generous to a fault. He had been a national leader in support of the Greenback movement, a cause Schlatter supported because it favored laborers. Pomeroy's newspaper, Pomeroy's Advance Thought, championed the economic interests of the common man.
However, Francis Schlatter was no common man — as he would later demonstrate. Coming to America in 1884, he spent a few years in obscurity, his place of residence and activities unknown. But in the late 1880s he appeared in Jamesport, Long Island, and set himself up as a shoemaker in "Aunt" Sally Corbin's home on the main road through town. Already he had gained a reputation for his work. A doctor named Lawton in New York City employed him to produce custom-made shoes from leather and soles, which the doctor sent to Jamesport, and Schlatter made about fifteen dollars a week — a healthy income that he saved through his frugality and simple lifestyle.
After a while he met William Ryan, about four years younger than he, who worked on the Annie Wilcox and later the Cora P. White, fishing boats operating out of nearby Greenport. Ryan convinced his friend to give up shoemaking and serve as a fireman's assistant on the latter boat — and Schlatter did. He also left Sally Corbin's home and began boarding with the Ryan family — including Ryan's parents, three brothers, and six sisters. The family was happy to have him — father Thomas said he always paid his board on time — and neighbors and friends liked him even if he struck them as a bit strange. For one thing, he studied to distraction, holing himself up in his room at night to pursue one subject or another — and always English grammar and pronunciation. A friend of the family said, "He knew a lot, and he talked just like a book."
For a few months, life seemed idyllic. Schlatter joined the family in most of their activities. He attended the Congregationalist and Methodist churches with them in Jamesport, but sometimes walked six miles to the Catholic church in Riverhead. For relaxation, he played croquet with the Ryan girls — and Mary, the eldest, said he played "as though he was making his will." The sisters delighted in teasing him. When they cheated, just for fun, he would get so upset that a denture would fall out, exposing a large gap in his upper teeth.
Aside from this flaw, he had a pleasant face and a neat, clean appearance. He had a thick mustache that narrowed at the ends, hazel blue eyes, and a long, narrow nose. He looked something like an accountant or bank teller — and, given his meticulous tidiness, he could have been one. Friends in Jamesport learned that he was engaged to a woman named Kate, who lived on Staten Island, and he received letters from her — the only ones he got, according to the postmaster. Then, after a few months, she left him. People said he took it hard, and he lost interest in women after that.
He soon received another shock — and much worse. William Ryan took ill, and his general health quickly deteriorated. Schlatter tried to help his friend, even buying a magnetic belt, a widely advertised nostrum for various ailments. But it didn't help. William died on June 29, 1889, and Schlatter moved out of the Ryan home. He took up lodging in a boardinghouse next to the railroad station and returned to shoemaking. Ryan's death, and Schlatter's efforts to stave it off, may have triggered his interest in healing — and it surely deepened his interest in spiritualism. At the same time, he was beset by vivid dreams of frustration and loss. "They were principally of young women in white robes," a friend said. "His chief complaint about the visions was that whenever he tried to touch the young women they always vanished. This was a great discouragement to him."
Within a few months, Schlatter abandoned Long Island altogether. He moved to New York City and took up residence with another cobbler at 96 Grove Street, near Greenwich Village. Here, in July 1891, he petitioned for U.S. citizenship — but his petition curiously lacked entries for birth date, age, port of arrival, and date of arrival. Furthermore, there is no record that he ever became a naturalized citizen.
At this time, too, he met Brick Pomeroy. Schlatter suddenly took an interest, his Jamesport friends said, in mining ventures out west. He had accumulated a good deal of money, and Pomeroy persuaded him to invest in various mining enterprises — and, of course, the Atlantic & Pacific Railway Tunnel Company. Schlatter leaped at the chance to invest his savings and get rich. Not one to do things half-heartedly, he also subscribed to mining journals and followed the stock market. His sudden capitalistic bent suggests that he was impulsive — and this would surely prove to be true a year later, when the loss of his savings turned him into a capitalist-hating Populist. But, for the moment, he assuaged his sense of loss with dreams of wealth, and he made plans to travel to Denver, a lively center of spiritualism, séances, and psychic experimentation in the West.
* * *
Passengers exiting Denver's Union Station in September 1892 beheld the city's prosperity like a beacon as they looked down Seventeenth Street. Straight ahead, on both the left and right sides, rose block after block of handsome, high-storied commercial buildings, all with commanding facades of sandstone, glass, brick, and terracotta trim. In the shadow of these stone-bound skyscrapers, pedestrians made their way along concrete sidewalks or crossed over the hard-packed earthen street watching for passing trolleys, bicycles, or horse-drawn wagons. This was Denver's Wall Street of the West, the largest business center between Chicago and San Francisco.
Schlatter walked a block or two from Union Station to Larimer Street. He stopped at the Railroad Building at 1515 Larimer, went inside, and entered the offices of the Atlantic & Pacific Railway Tunnel Company, where Albert Whitaker sat. He carried a letter from Brick Pomeroy asking Whitaker to help him establish a shoemaking business in Denver. Whitaker, who was not only Pomeroy's business partner but his son-in-law, was willing to oblige. They soon found space in a home at 1845 Stout Street, a block or so from Seventeenth and not a bad place from which to cull trade from the businessmen and storekeepers in the city center.
The home belonged to two doctors, Luther J. Ingersoll and his wife, Mary, who lived next door at 1843 Stout. Both were practitioners of homeopathic medicine, and Luther had made a few discoveries in homeopathic surgery, along with inventing several widely used surgical instruments. Schlatter was naturally drawn toward unconventional medicine, and he befriended the Ingersolls. Aside from the traits that made him a good boarder — his neatness, sense of responsibility, and industry — he was friendly and talkative, especially on the subject of healing. Before long, Mary Ingersoll became aware of his deep belief in spiritual healing, but she didn't object to it. After all, as a homeopathic physician she had felt the scorn of the traditional medical establishment.
Luther, on the other hand, didn't share in their discussions, for he was totally deaf — which somewhat curtailed his clinical and surgical practice, though not his inventiveness. As he had done with William Ryan months earlier, Schlatter set out to correct Luther's condition. He told Mary Ingersoll one day that he'd had a revelation about her husband. The doctor's hearing, Schlatter said, would be restored over time, but the healing would not begin for a year or more — to be precise, on December 3, 1894.
If this surprised her — as it probably did — it was perhaps because she wasn't aware that Schlatter had been reading, ruminating, and experimenting on a theory he'd developed about the convergence of healing and prophecy. This odd combination grew out of his spiritualist beliefs, for initially he communicated with spirits to learn about his own future and the future of others. He soon began making short-term predictions related to healing, complete with exact dates on which cures would take place. When his predictions failed, as they invariably did, he laid the blame on his own neophyte stage of mental and spiritual development. In time, he told his disappointed subjects, he would reach the fullness of his powers.
But while Schlatter sought to cure others by prophetic healing, he applied more conventional methods to himself. When he first met Mary Ingersoll, she saw how sallow and unhealthy his face looked and noticed his hard, hacking cough. He was about 5 feet 9 inches, she estimated, but walked with a noticeable droop in his shoulders, and he kept a heavy overcoat on all the time. In short, he showed symptoms of tuberculosis. But after a few weeks in Denver he became stronger, healthier, and more energetic. Eventually he discarded the overcoat. His recovery was not unusual for some tuberculars — or "lungers," a name given the thousands who sought a cure in Color ado's sunny climate and rarefied air. But Schlatter went even further. He bought a set of barbells to build up his strength and spent hours during his free time walking the hills west of Denver.
Schlatter became well known in the spiritualist community and was a regular attendee at séances. But other believers acknowledged that he was on a much higher plane — more of a teacher and guide than a student. John W. Boucher, a spiritualist companion and fellow shoemaker, admired the depth of Schlatter's thought. "Suppose you should be standing by him and be talking on some subject," Boucher commented. "He would apparently pay no attention to what was said and then would start in with a remark showing much deeper thought and a greater command of the subject than you had dreamed."
In spite of its paramount influence on his thinking, spiritualism was but one current swirling into the gathering mainstream of Schlatter's thought. As Mary Ingersoll noted, he was also deeply interested in predicting the future, and he had begun reading books on mental healing, along with general works on history, politics, and religion. But the rich assortment of contemporary ideas — spiritualism, theosophy, mental telepathy, psychic phenomena, numerology, and Christian Science — were useful to him only insofar as they complemented his abiding belief that God was directing his destiny.
One formative metaphysical belief system was New Thought, a movement whose basic premise was that mind — and its correlates, spirit and will — constituted the foundation of being. Within this huge philosophical tent, various avenues of thought flourished, from the theistic proposition that God is mind to its opposite, that mind is all. An exponent of the latter concept, and an atheist, was Helen Wilmans. Her Blossom of the Century appeared in 1893, shortly after Schlatter moved to Denver, and it had an enormous influence on him.
Wilmans's philosophy incorporated spiritualism into a grand scheme of the universe, but with a significant twist — for she denied the reality of death. In fact, she proposed that the real world itself was nothing but mind, and mind was the visible expression of a cosmic evolutionary principle she called the Law of Being. Matter, gravity, and death — elements and forces that inhibited the freedom-seeking human spirit — could be overcome by simply recognizing the Law of Being and how it permeated everything. Enlightened minds could thus transform matter — which was but mind — to their own ends. Thus spiritual healing was merely a way of helping others recognize the latent power within them, and to realize that disease and death were merely chimeras.
In part, Wilmans's philosophy reflected Mary Baker Eddy's principles of Christian Science. Yet the Law of Being came with no religious overtones. It was sufficient unto itself as the engine of the universe. It could be called God, or not, as one wished. But Wilmans rejected the notion that God created man, and she held in contempt the idea that anyone would draw strength from a higher power. "No one who leans on a power outside of himself," she wrote, "can be anything but weak."
In spite of its denial of God, Schlatter read and re-read Blossom of the Century and raved about it to almost anyone within earshot, including Mary Ingersoll, John Boucher, and a new acquaintance, former Leadville judge J. B. Stansell, who had come to the shop at 1845 Stout to have his shoes repaired. Stansell found himself drawn to Schlatter's ideas and returned often just to engage the cobbler in conversation. Several times he invited Schlatter to his room at the Albany Hotel at Seventeenth and Stout, less than two blocks from the cobbler's home, and lent him books from his library on spiritualism and faith cure. Though Schlatter was a man of "dense ignorance," Stansell thought, he had an inquiring mind and great enthusiasm for mental healing, especially within the framework of Helen Wilmans's philosophy.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Vanishing Messiah by David N. Wetzel. Copyright © 2016 David N. Wetzel. Excerpted by permission of University of Iowa Press.
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Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
Prologue: Where the Mirages Are Born 1
Part 1 The Life of the Harp: A Biography
1 The Denver Cobbler 19
2 Pilgrimage 35
3 The Desert Messiah 51
4 Healer of the Multitudes 67
5 "Father takes me away," 91
6 Winter Retreat 105
Interregnum: Into Mexico 119
Part 2 The Hand of the Harper: A Biographical Quest
7 "These men were imposters" 133
8 "Look at my face," 149
9 The Sparrow's Fall 163
10 The Days of Daniel 177
11 "A True Account…," 191
12 God's Leading 205
Epilogue: Francis Schlatter Cyclus 219
Appendix: The Evidence Trail 223
Timeline 231
Notes 233
Survey of Prior Works 265
Index 271