Apr 16, 2019 - Sale 2505

Sale 2505 - Lot 235

Price Realized: $ 1,375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(WOMEN.) Buffum, Adaline. An unusual manuscript on Spiritualism and the United States Church of Women. 12 manuscript pages on 6 sheets disbound from a ledger, 13 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches, with worn original boards present; minor wear to contents, final leaf irregularly cropped. New York, 28 September to 13 October 1876
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Adaline Mendum Whittier Buffum (1822-1888) was a prominent Chicago Spiritualist and medium. From 1868 to 1870, she produced the monthly periodical, News from the Spirit World, which was "expressly devoted to Spirit Communications and the defence of Mediums." As described in this manuscript, she was also involved with the United States Church of Women, which was devoted to creating a new government led by women and headquartered in Chicago. They attempted to issue their own currency.
Written in 1876 while Buffum was staying at the New York home of her friend and colleague Dr. Sarah L. Hendrick, the present manuscript is a combination of Buffum's musings and spirit communications, occasionally addressed to Hendrick ("Dear Dr."). It is full of feminist content, including Buffum's railings against the masculine culture of Christianity. It is unsigned, but the author twice refers to herself as "Mrs. Whittier Buffum, medium." It begins: "This book is opened today Sept 28th 1876 for the purpose of recording intelligence from the interior courts of the invisible world where the immortal reside, who once inhabited this planet, and who now are engaged in the work of super crystalization, preparatory to the elevation of mortals into the superb spheres of Mars and Saturn, for if mathematics proves any thing, it proves that increase cannot be resisted, therefore onward we go from one to trillions having an established identity no more to be ignored than the figure eight." Other entries read more like vague horoscopes, presumably wisdom imparted from the spirit world: "Oct. 2/76. Money from two men two packages, journey on some one coming, great news, hasty news by letter and more news from Washington. Friends many, business, money and an offer wish through a dark man and an offer." Another entry begins like an address from the spirit world, but the medium is clearly present in the relay: "Now dear daughter we are not saying these words to raise you up, and then to fiendishly enjoy the day when you shall be cast down. Oh no, we have come a long distance this morning to speak the words of truth to you, the words of truth to you through this medium who has not been as successful in her undertakings as you have in yours. Have you never taken notice that she is not permitted to grasp and hold anything material. Her husband and children and property taken, and then after years of exertion her sons wife takes all her business away, and now the United States Government seizes her literature, and where is she? Stranded as it were on the great shore of time, almost friendless, yet mark the patience with which she carries the great unpopular scheme of a United States Church for Women."
Buffum also makes mention of the monetary currency issued by the United States Church, noting that it is banned by the American government: "Oct. 10th [1876] letter from the United States Treasury department refusing the United States Church of Women the right to circulate their notes which corresponds to Continental notes of 1776. The President of the United States refuses us a hearing, each department refuses us any privileges whatsoever. How can woman free herself from the bondage of Priestcraft?"
The manuscript concludes: "Now dear Dr., I will say goodbye and pick up my papers which have accumulated around me since I left home. I regard it as a bad sign to have accumulated so many. Coming events cast shadows before; little straws show which way the wind blows. But these are times when all signs fail. I do intend to give up all work for the U. S. C. unless I should at my own leisure time finish translating the Bible, against the time when the Devil lies low, as women do now, who try to resist his kingdom set up by the Jesuits or Jesusites. . . . And I prayed our Dear Mother Lord that your trials might be lightened as a reward for your faithfulness in performing all the tasks that have been set before you. And a voice answered me saying, 'All my daughters are called, but few are chosen. She is chosen, and set apart, therefore she must be tried, in the fiery furnace as it were; submit to the double refining process, preparatory to future demands that will be made upon her time and talents'. . . . I must go tomorrow at 6 o'clock from the foot of Desbrosses St, to Chicago and Joliet. It is all, like the country, swallowed up by Jesusism, the masculine power."