Rapping Spirits, Maggie Fox, and the Love Life of Elisha Kent Kane

When Elisha Kent Kane met Margaret Fox in 1852, he was a rising star. He was no longer just a well-traveled physician from Philadelphia, he was a hero on a mission. He had announced to the world that he was going to find and rescue Sir John Franklin from a location whose very existence was in question, a place tiiat sparked heated debates and fired the imaginations of nineteenth-century Americans - the Open Polar Sea. This was quite a task for a young man, but because of his family's efforts and his skillful use of the popular media, thousands of Americans came to believe in his abilities. In this way, he and Maggie Fox were much alike. Like Elisha, Maggie was also a rising star. Though she was just a farm girl from rural New York, she had also dedicated herself to a seemingly impossible mission. She was trying to rescue humanity from the cold sting of death by venturing into the never seen but often dreamed of spirit world to bring back departed loved ones. To many this seemed a preposterous, even blasphemous, venture, but thanks to her family and supporters' clever use of the popular media, thousands of Americans rallied behind her. Unlike almost any other woman in America at that time, Maggie could understand Elisha at a fundamental level because she too led a life dedicated to adventure, exploration, and fame. They came from different social classes and operated within different fundamental belief structures (Elisha scientific; Maggie religious), but their goals were much the same. They both sought and achieved fame by getting the public to believe in a mysterious world that no one had ever seen and to support them in the exploration of this world. Even more importantly, having achieved fame, they both suffered from its dehumanizing influence. To seek to understand Elisha Kent Kane is to also seek to understand Margaret Fox because their lives were intertwined not only by romance, but by the realities of fame in nineteenth-century America. On a cold winter evening in 1848, spirits of the dead descended on a small farm in Hydesville, New York, and began communicating via telegraphic to two young girls, Maggie and Kate Fox, or so thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of nineteenth-century Americans came to believe. Much like the fanaticism of Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his angel Moroni, or William Miller and his apocalyptic predictions that spawned the Adventist movement, many antebellum Americans saw the Fox sisters and their spirit-rapping as just another of the many outlandish new religious movements that sprang up during the fervent revivalism of their era. Critics dismissed the Fox sisters as nothing but two mischievous farm girls who had tricked their superstitious mother and neighbors into believing that the popping noises that sounded in their presence were messages from the spirit world. There was a problem, however. The people who went to see Maggie and Kate could not explain where the rapping noises came from, and even more troubling, the information the rappings spelled out was often eerily and inexplicably correct. The public's inability to prove or disprove the spirit-rappings resulted in a renewed and heightened interest in Spiritualism and propelled Maggie and Kate Fox to infamous stardom.1 Before the Rochester Rappings made their family infamous, the Fox family of Hydesville, New York, was much like many other rural families of the early 1800s.2 In 1812, John Fox, the son of a blacksmith in Rockland County, New York, married a local girl, Margaret Smith, who came from an industrious family with ties on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border - as loyalists they had fled and prospered on the Canadian side of Lake Ontario during the American Revolution. As a young couple in a time of restless expansion, urbanization, and industrialization, John and Margaret sought a better life first in New York City and later in the far-western New York frontier. Between 1813 and 1820 they had four childrenAnn Leah, Maria, Elizabeth, and David - before John, a severe alcoholic by the early 1820s, abandoned the family. …

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