“Talking with the Dead in Massachusetts” Stone House Lecture Series
Lake Pleasant Hotel at the spiritualist community in Montague, Mass.
19 March 2015 — “Talking with the Dead in Massachusetts”
Stone House Lecture Series
Stone House Museum, 20 Maple St., Belchertown, 7 p.m.
In the 1850s, Modern Spiritualism — talking to the spirits of the dead — became the fastest growing religious movement in the United States, claiming hundreds of thousands, if not millions of believers. Although its first manifestations took place in upstate New York, Massachusetts became one of its movement’s intellectual centers, with writers and spirit mediums throughout the state. Rob Cox will talk about the history of American Spiritualism, its people, their beliefs, and particularly their activity in western Massachusetts.
Rob Cox is an archivist and historian and for the last ten years, head of Special Collections at UMass Amherst. Since receiving his doctorate in history from the University of Michigan, he has published books on the history of the Spiritualist movement, the Lewis and Clark expedition, and the foods of New England.