Lizzie Doten

Elizabeth "Lizzie" Doten (April 1, 1827 – January 15, 1913) was an American poet and a prominent spiritualist lecturer and trance speaker and writer who received special attention for her supposed ability to channel poetry from Edgar Allan Poe after his death.[1][2] She wrote poetry, fiction, and essays and edited an annual spiritualist publication, Lily of the Valley. She was active on the lecture circuit between 1864 and 1880.[3]

Portrait of Lizzie Doten

Family and early life

Elizabeth Doten was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the seventh of nine children. Both her parents were Mayflower descendants: Her father Samuel’s ancestor was Edward Doty, and her mother Rebecca was descended from William Bradford, the Pilgrim governor of Plymouth Colony.[4] Her brothers, Major Samuel Doten (1812–1906) and Captain Charles Doten (1833–1918) led the first two Union companies to deploy from Plymouth in the Civil War.[5][6] Another brother, Alfred Doten (1829–1903) left for the California gold fields on a sailing ship in 1949 and later became a journalist in Nevada. He is best known for his intimate daily journals chronicling Western American life in the last half of the 19th century.[7]

Lizzie Doten (she exclusively used the name Lizzie Doten, never Elizabeth, in her professional life) was educated in Plymouth public schools before spending a year in a private school in Plymouth at the age of 17. She reported to have had psychic experiences as a child, leading to a lifelong interest in Spiritualism.[8] She also wrote poetry as a child. In the lengthy introduction to her first book of poetry, Poems of the Inner Life, she described the mystical experiences in her childhood that shaped her life, and later her “passive surrender to the inspirations that moved upon me – I have held conscious communion with disembodied spirits.” She went on to describe the nature of the mental and physical effects of this communion. She reported that some of the poems in her book were dictated by Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, Robert Burns, and one came to her as a prophecy of the fate (unknown at the time she wrote the poem) of the Arctic explorers under Sir John Franklin.[9]

Professional life

As Doten matured, she expressed strong criticism of orthodox Christianity and organized religion in the defense of Spiritualism. She did not conduct private sessions as a medium, but she advocated for the rights of mediums. At the same time she protested against their organization, the American Association of Spiritualists, on feminist and antiauthoritarian grounds, although she sometimes participated in their conventions. In her activities, she believed it was important to maintain her principles.[10][11]

During her lectures, Doten would speak about her religious philosophy and about women’s rights and other social reforms. She championed the cause of equal pay for women and often spoke out against marriage as a means of survival.[12] She frequently spoke at the Melodeon or under the auspices of the Lyceum in Boston, entering into extemporaneous trance speaking. Her entry in the Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science describes her as “greatest and best improvisatrice of the XIX Century.”[13] She would generally end her lectures by reciting a poem, seemingly dictated from beyond the grave.

Later life

Doten published her last book in 1871, and she retired from speaking in 1880, ostensibly for health reasons;[14] however, according to at least one source, “Miss Doten withdrew from the lecture field and mediumistic work by reason of the fact that she had become unable to determine the point at which her personality ceased to act and the agency of spirit influence began.”[15]

In 1902, at the age of 75, Doten married her long-time companion Z. (Zabdiel) Adams Willard (1826–1918).[16] It was her first marriage and his second, after the death of his first wife, Lucy, in 1901.[17] During the 1880s she spent time with the Willards in Calaveras County, California, where he owned the Oro y Plata quartz, silver and gold mine, and invented mining processes and equipment.[18][19] Until 1870, Willard had worked in his family firm in Boston, Simon Willard Clocks.[20]

After their marriage, the Willards lived in Brookline, Massachusetts. Lizzie Doten Willard died on January 15, 1913 at the age of 85.[21]

Selected publications
  • Doten, Lizzie. The Haunted Church, or The Little Organ Girl. Boston, J.M.Usher, 1852.
  • Doten, Lizzie. Hesper, the Home-Spirit: A Simple Story of Household Labor and Love. Boston : Abel Tompkins, c1858.
  • Doten, Lizzie. Poems from the Inner Life. Boston:'William White and Co., l864.
  • Doten, Lizzie. Review of a Lecture by Jas. Freeman Clarke on the Religions Philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Boston: William White and Company, 1865.
  • Doten, Lizzie. "Free Love and Affinity: A Discourse Delivered Under Spirit Influence at the Melodean, Boston” Boston: Bela Marsh, 1867.
  • Doten, Lizzie. My Affinity and Other Stories. Boston, 1870.
  • Doten, Lizzie. Poems of Progress. Boston: Colby and Rich, 1871.

References
  1. “Poe Poem After his Death: Claimed to Have Been Revealed to the Medium Lizzie Doten.” The Washington Post. Jan 11, 1914. p.E11.
  2. Rosenheim, Shawn. "Resurrexi: Poe in the Crypt of Lizzie Doten," in The Cryptographic Imagination: Secret Writing from Edgar Poe to the Internet Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1997. pp.115–38.
  3. Bednarowski, Mary Ferrell. Lizzie Doten: Literary Spiritualist. Master’s Thesis, Duquesne University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1969. #1301804.
  4. The Doty-Doten Family in America: Descendants of Edward Doty, An Emigrant by the Mayflower, 1620. Compiled by Ethan Allen Doty. Brooklyn NY: Published by the Author, 1897.
  5. Powers, George W. The story of the Thirty eighth regiment of Massachusetts volunteers. Cambridge, Dakin and Metcalf, 1866 p.283.
  6. Nason, George W. History and complete roster of the Massachusetts regiments, minute men of '61 who responded to the first call of President Abraham Lincoln, April 15, 1861, to defend the flag and Constitution of the United States ... and biographical sketches of minute men of Massachusetts. Boston, Mass.: Smith & McCance, 1910. p.49.
  7. Doten, Alfred. The Journals of Alfred Doten, 1849–1903. Edited by Walter Van Tilburg Clark. Reno : University of Nevada Press, 1973. Note: for the online edition, the username and password are doten.
  8. Bednarowski, Mary Ferrell. Lizzie Doten: Literary Spiritualist. Master’s Thesis, Duquesne University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1969. #1301804.
  9. Doten, Lizzie. Introduction: “A Word to the World” in Poems from the Inner Life. Boston: William White and Co., l864. pp. v–xxviii.
  10. Bednarowski, Mary Ferrell. Lizzie Doten: Literary Spiritualist. Master’s Thesis, Duquesne University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1969. #1301804.
  11. Braude, Ann. Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-century America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989. pp. 165–167.
  12. Francke, Bernadette S. "Divination on Mount Davidson: An Overview of Women Spiritualists and Fortunetellers on the Comstock" in Comstock Women: The Making of a Mining Community, edited by Ronald M James and C. Elizabeth Raymond. Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1998
  13. Fodor, Nestor. Encyclopaedia of Psychic Sciences. University Books, Inc. 1966. p.100.
  14. Bednarowski, Mary Ferrell. Lizzie Doten: Literary Spiritualist. Master’s Thesis, Duquesne University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1969. #1301804.
  15. Fodor, Nestor. Encyclopaedia of Psychic Sciences. University Books, Inc. 1966. p.100.
  16. Doten, Alfred. The Journals of Alfred Doten, 1849–1903. Edited by Walter Van Tilburg Clark. Reno : University of Nevada Press, 1973. p.2134. Note: for the online edition, the username and password are doten.
  17. Lucy Allen Ware Willard (1824–1901)" in Find a Grave Database. Accessed 09, March, 2020.
  18. Berner, Noah. “Local historian, archaeologists search for early Calaveras County rancher.” Calaveras Enterprise, Oct. 29, 2019.
  19. Limbaugh, Ronald H. and Willard P. Fuller. Calaveras Gold: The Impact of Mining on a Mother Lode County. Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 2004. p61-62.
  20. Willard, John Ware. A History of Simon Willard: Inventor And Clockmaker, Together With Some Account of His Sons—his Apprentices—and the Workmen Associated With Him, With Brief Notices of Other Clockmakers of the Family Name. Boston: Printed by E. O. Cockayne, 1911. p74.
  21. "Mrs. S. Adams Willard." Special to The New York Times [obituary]. New York Times, Jan 16, 1913. p17.
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