Listen to the episode here.

This week is full of DYK sidebars, and we are not sorry even a little bit.

Theresa kicks things off with the story of Mexico’s first Black president, Vicente Guerrero. Did she mention he was the second president in the country’s history?! Buckle in as she shares the very short presidency of Guerrero, who would still make his mark when he abolished slavery and established the possibility for a second underground railroad headed south of the border.

Angie can’t wait to celebrate Fall. So she kicks off Spooky season early with a tale of the Eddy Brothers. These psychic brothers hailed from Chittenden and were hometown heroes. But many view these mediums as frauds who merely took advantage of the Spiritualism movement. Who’s to say?

This story pairs well with:
General Antonio López de Santa Anna and how he lost his legs during the Pastry War of 1838
The Fox Sisters  

Transcript

Theresa: Hi, and welcome to the Unhinged History Podcast, the podcast where one host will forget the name of the her own damn podcast, 191 episodes in, and say introduce her co-host. I’m host one, I’m the forgetful human, and that’s host two. 

Angie: Joke’s on you. I am also forgetful, but apparently I can’t speak today either, so we’re winning. 

Theresa: I mean, what a great day to hit working for truly. Okay. So who goes first? You, I just looked. Ah, Okay, I guess I’ll go first. Um, So, okay. I had somebody, I had somebody on TikTok a while back suggest that I cover this human. Um, so TikTok user local Oscaro. Uh and my sources are Prairie View AM University, Vincent Guerrero, Mexico’s Greatest Man of Color by Jimena Duran Castellanos. Castellanos, because those two L’s make a Y. 

Uh history.com, the little known underground railroad that rounds south to Mexico by Becky Little, beyond Victoriana, the America’s first black and native president, Vincent Guerrero by Theodore G. Vincent. Okay, let’s go. Okay. Stay with me. There’s some overlaps you are not expecting. 

Angie: Okay. All right. Now joke on you. I don’t know what to expect. 

Theresa: Okay, fair. I mean, I’m here for this, truly. Okay. So when you think about 1500s, New Spain, Central America, the whole nine. I had a couple of things pointed out to me in this that I didn’t necessarily connect the dots for. Okay. Okay, so there was a bunch of, oh, wow, that makes sense. I had no idea. 

Journey with me for the first one. That area of the world was deemed inhospitable. The new world, New Spain, inhospitable for European women. They wanted to kind of hold off on immigrating until they kind of got to see how it played out. So very few European women, yeah. 

But there’s a booming slave trade. Shocking. Yeah. And so throughout, like we’re talking from the 1500s up until 1810, African populations living in Central America staunchly outnumber those of Spanish descent. Okay. And they would do so until roughly 1810. Okay. Which makes sense, but wasn’t something I had tied together. 

Angie: Yeah, I wouldn’t have thought I wouldn’t have made those connections, yeah. Okay. 

Theresa: Journey with me, August 9th, 1783. We are in Pixla, which is now the state of Guerrero in Mexico, and onto us, Vincent Ramon Guerrero Saldana is born. Okay. We’ve got the seven names, so this is not quite seven, but yeah. So he’s got kind of a humble family going. He’s got a father, Juan Pedro Guerrero. He is African Mexican. 

And his mother, Guadalupe Saldana, is a native Mexican. Okay. And hearing this combo was wild. It makes sense in hindsight, but wasn’t something I pieced together on my own. Okay. Now, Vincent Guerrero, our hero, he doesn’t have a formal education while he’s growing up, and he’s dedicating his time to farming activities, and he’s working as a mule driver that transports goods. Okay. 

So kind of a make and meet sort of dude. Politically, both of his parents are devout supporters of Spanish rule in New Spain. Okay. Now, I kind of talked a little bit about this at the beginning about how New Spain likely had the largest number of African slaves in the Americas. 

I didn’t quite hit on that, but I just now. In the 1595 census, Afro-Mexicans outnumbered Spanish and mestizos, and that’s indigenous people who are a mixed Spanish and indigenous descent in the urban towns, that is. So massive Mexican or Afro-Mexican population. By 1646, the numbers increased to a hundred or just over 116,000 of Afro Mexicans, and 35,000 for those that identified as just African. 

Okay. So huge number of mixed, small number of just black. Now, so obviously we’re seeing these children from mixed descent increase rapidly versus ones that are staying in the same gene, not same area. Right. Um as this goes on, you would see the African descended populations comprise around 9% compared to the Spanish and their descendants, who only comprise about an eighth of a percent. 

So there’s 10 times the number. Right, okay. And so this kind of is bizarre to me, and it makes sense, but it okay, so you just you have new Spaniard society was bizarre in this reading because it’s not just constituted of Spanish and Indian, like native indigenous humans, not from the sub Asian continent, um, and African races. This the mid-16th century sees Spaniards bringing in from the Pacific colony, like you’ve got Filipino slaves, you have Chinese, Japanese, and Indian merchants, Indian being sub Asia. 

Angie: Wow, okay, so this is a mix. 

Theresa: It’s a mix. So the concept of there being literal samurai walking through 1600s Mexico City is a legitimate thing. It is a possibility. Yeah. And I I wrapped my brain around how globalized of a world we lived in in the mid-1600s and had a hard time with it. Like I would not believe that fanfic. I would. I’d watch it. 

Angie: I would want to so hard. 

Theresa: But I just I couldn’t imagine. Truly. So we have New Spain, ton, very diverse, more diverse than I really believed. And that is that is happening. Now, looking at the colonies as a whole, the European countries, they colonized much of the new world. This was important for them. This is something we’re going to realize because it’s providing them with goods and a workforce. 

And this is helping these countries get bigger, faster, powerful, stronger. Um we understand, like of course, our history books were talking about the Europeans wanted gold and silver. They also wanted precious woods. Brand new woods they hadn’t seen. 

These are beautiful. You gotta turn that into grandma’s touch that you’re gonna, you know, wheel down to the grandkids. Uh but they’re also looking at foods like tomatoes, chocolate, corn, potatoes, and other products that Europeans didn’t have. Pepper. Oh, yeah. 

Yeah. Spices are always going to make the world run. Um, and it’s like seeing this, I’m like, oh yeah, corn and potatoes. 

Of course, those are new world commodities. Yeah, this makes sense. But you know, again, seeing it all laid out like this, I’m like, ah, duh, I should have thought about this, but I didn’t. Now, we also need to realize that it’s the literal enslavement that is that labor component that is also providing the fruits of the labor, really helping amplify things so you’re not having to pay for all the work that somebody else is putting in on your behalf. Right, okay. Now that we’ve gotten that established, slavery existed well before the new world was discovered. And the commerce of Africans become super important for Europe really only after the 15th century when they begun to you know settle down there and build colonies. 

So the first Africans in New Spain accompanied explorers and conquistadors like Christopher Columbus and Hernan Cortez, and then later we have these enslaved Africans that are taken to work in the cotton fields and slicker shugar plantations. That was beautiful. You like that? Yeah, I can’t wait to edit this edit this episode and want to smash my head into my desk. 

Angie: No, you you you you covered it. I called it, I’m sorry. 

Theresa: You’re good. You’re good. Um but they’re also, you know, we know this. They’re cultivating coffee, tobacco, rice, they’re mining, all the painful physical labor. Right. So gradually blacks start taking the roles that are previously performed by Mexican natives. Okay. And this is happening, the same reason it’s happening all over, you know, what we’d consider North America around this time, because the Native Mexicans, their population is declining. 

Why? Abuse from conquistadors, tons of European diseases like smallpox, measles, influenza, uh, you name it. This chance we’re seeing the native indigenous populations decline, but thankfully they brought a boat of of replacements. 

Angie: Right. Who have already had to deal with us. 

Theresa: So there’s that. 

Angie: Yeah. Yeah. 

Theresa: The ones that survived are the ones that we kept. But okay, stick with me. Okay. Yes. Now, we’ve estimated that 25 to 30 million West Africans were deported from their home countries and sold to different slavers. Most of the people that were enslaved were men, but we also have women and children. Now, combined, we have around 10 or 12 million slaves that are brought to the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries. In New Spain, we have three ports where these people are imported through. 

And so it’s it’s limited to pretty much Vera Cruz, I’m gonna butcher this, Compeche, and Guerrero. From there, they would be transported and distributed throughout other areas of the country. Slavery would go on here for 300 years in New Spain. Wow, okay. And I’m gonna get to the time where it’s abolished, and it would be abolished in New Spain 40 years before Abraham Lincoln would do the same in the U.S. 

when he signed the emancipation proclamation in 1863. Okay. Okay. Now that I’ve gotten a lot of that backstory, we’re gonna go back to our boy Vincent Guerrero. I’ve already told you parents, they are a huge fan of the Spanish rule, but Guerrero, he’s anti-colonialist, and he’s been like this from the start. 

Okay. So we all fall out with our parents. This is where his political ideology splits. It’s November of 1810 when a revolution broke out for the Mexican independence. He’s working at a gunsmith and he joins the revolution in November. Okay. Within two years, he rose to lieutenant colonel and he’s organizing the forces in southern Mexico. 

He’s leading a ton of successful campaigns throughout that whole region. Okay. And we have one story. 

This is a popular one. It shows up in a lot of the sources about him that would take place during his eleven years of fighting, and this would happen in 1819. His father, who’s who’s fairly old in his in his years at this point, he comes and he’s begging him to go to the viceroy of New Spain and offer his sword and surrender. 

Angie: Like, I don’t feel like that’s something he’s gonna do anytime soon. Right. 

Theresa: But if anybody’s gonna convince him, it’s gonna be dear old dad. Okay. Guerrero replies, and he’s standing before his men when he says this. Companions, this is my this old man is my father. He comes to offer me rewards in the name of the Spaniards. I have always respected my father, but my motherland comes first. 

Okay. And that line, my motherland comes first, that is the motto for the southern state of Carrero. Guerrero being named after him in his death. 

Okay, that’s pretty cool. Right? Like if you’re yeah, like don’t mess with Texas, but my motherland comes first. Yeah. I don’t know if that’s their official state thing. It’s on all of their bumper stickers in Texas. 

Angie: I I feel like it’s their state thing. 

Theresa: Yeah, it’s definitely the the assumed tagline for the state. Yeah. Okay, so between the years 1810 and 1821, Guerrero wins a total of 491 battles. 

Angie: My God, this man’s busy. 

Theresa: Yeah, he isn’t sitting still. He’s using a ton of guerrilla tactics against the Spanish army, and this is around that time where those tactics are super choice. Good for him. And when he wins, he’s the great leader who says, it wasn’t me. 

It was the people who fought in triumph. Truly. So earning hearts and minds. Mm-hmm. So Mexico gets its independence, but it it’s swamped with political turmoil. And we’ve kind of touched on this, and we’re gonna kind of stick with me. 

This is where the the integration comes. Because Guerrero, he collaborates with a fellow rebel leader named Agustin Iturbede, probably not how you say it, and they come up with the three guarantees for Mexico. One, for Mexico to become an independent constitutional monarchy, and for the abolition of the country’s radicalized nope, racialized class system between Spaniards, Creoles, and Mestizos and Native Indians, and for instituting Catholicism as the state religion. 

Okay. But once this dude, it turbide becomes the Emperor of Mexico by Congress, he goes back on a ton of his promises and he favors the elite landowners. Didn’t see that coming. Knew. And so Guerrero breaks his alliance with the Emperor and he sides with one Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana. 

Angie: Knew this boy was gonna show up. Yep. 

Theresa: Our legless wonder enters the scene. And they also team up with a third dude named Guadalupe Victoria. And they back this plan called the plan of Casamata, and this abolished the monarchy in favor of a republic. Okay. 

And the former emperor, he flees the country in March of 1823, and his support for his empire fails completely, and the 1824 Constitution would pass the following year. Okay. So for those of you playing at home, when Angie had a visceral reaction to me mentioning Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, it’s because when I mentioned this human, he is the source of a ton of chaos and was involved in something called the pastry war against France. And in that episode, I discuss kind of some of this chaos that I just touched on again. He’s a chaos goblin. He is a chaos goblin. 

And honestly, he’s doing it all for the plot, and I love him for it. Yeah, good arm, yeah. All right, so you have Santa Ana, you have Guerrero, and then you have Guadalupe Victoria. Guadalupe Victoria, that triad, he is elected the first president of Mexico in 1828. 

Okay. And then in the following election, Guerrero is running for president and gets a dude named Manuel Gomez Pedraza. And the upper class Pedraza, he’s like, you know, the high and mighty basically aristocracy. 

He wins the popular vote. But uh Santa Ana starts leading some demonstrations with the military against Pedraza in you know, like December 3rd of 1828. And strangely, Pedraza uh renounces his position. He flees to Europe. He’s like deuces, I it’s I may have gotten the popular vote, but it ain’t worth it. 

Angie: As it turns out, I’m I’m good. I’m great. Yeah. 

Theresa: Popular vote means nothing. I’m not that popular, apparently, with the military. 

Angie: Yeah, you know. This sounds familiar. 

Theresa: And so Guerrero gets instilled as the company’s second president, or the country’s, not the companies, the country’s second president, April 1st, my birthday, 1829. Happy birthday. Yeah, thank you. Now, Guerrero is president. He has kind of a brief tenure. I’m gonna get to kind of, you know, it doesn’t go very well very long because Mexico has revolving seat of power at this point. But Guerrero defends Mexico from the Spanish attempting to reconquer the nation. And as he’s defending his motherland, he tends to exhaust his nation’s backup financial resources because wars are pricey. What? And this gets the aristocracy deep in their fifies. 

Because yeah, we we needed you to to be financially wise and not ask me for more money. Um, but he’s doing Guerrero does a ton of cool things for the working class. Despite the significant economic limitations he’s facing, he’s taxing the rich, uh, which makes them not like him, granting rights to the indigenous people, and he’s fighting for racially and economically oppressed people because of where he came from. Good for him. He’s also promoting the purchase of Mexican products and his government dedicated or clearly dedicated to the people who had many needs after years and years of conflict and left the nation with a predominantly poor class. So he’s doing everything that he can to help those that look like him and act like him and are from his background. 

That’s really cool. And what brings us to the part of our story where we went on a rabbit trail earlier, September 16th of 1829, he celebrates the anniversary of independence by abolishing slavery in Mexico. Okay. Now there’s one subsection, there’s an isthmus that it’s still allowed for whatever reason, but everywhere else in Mexico, forboten. 

Okay. Now, slaveholders in America knew that enslaved people are escaping to Mexico because it’s now illegal there. So the U.S. tried to get Mexico to sign a fugitive slave treaty, just like the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 that compelled the free states to return the escapees back to the South. 

Angie: In Mexico’s like, nah, we get Mexico’s like kick rocks. 

Theresa: They refuse to sign the treaty and say every slave that steps foot here, free immediately. Love it. Now, despite this, we would have uh U.S. owners that would still hire slave catchers to illegally kidnap the escapees in Mexico. This checks. 

This does check. Now, there are researchers that estimate between five and ten thousand people escape bondage into Mexico. And that was said by a woman named Maria Hammock, and she’s writing her dissertation about this topic from the University of Texas in Austin, but she really believes that number is much higher. She just can’t prove it. Okay. So despite this huge advancement in progressive legislation, ending slavery would prove to be Guerrero’s downfall. 

Because many people, especially the wealthy who are making their money on the backs of humans that are not paying, oppose this idea. Right. This makes sense. Yeah. 

Now members of his own administration opposed and betrayed him. Which also checks. Yeah. We have Euro American enslavers, especially in Texas, that don’t like the idea of losing the economic power that they had based on slavery. And since they are a part of Mexico, they do not appreciate this being taken away from them. 

Yeah, okay. So Guerrero’s order arrives in Texas in October 16th, but political chief Ramon Musquez, their workers rejected it because it was a violation of the colonization laws that secured the settlers’ property. So they’re thinking, you made an exception down south for that little isthmus. What about Texas? 

Give us what we want. Texas is huge, too. Texas is huge. So with all of that, Guerrero’s decree doesn’t technically make changes over slavery in Texas, but this would become the reason why Texas society decided to succeed from Mexico and join the United States, which was still involved in the slave trade. Oh, right, okay. So now we’re back to the Texas Mexican issue, which heavily involved in Santa Ana. Now, three months after his declaration, Guerrero is driven out of office. 

Angie: His own official He did all that in three months. 

Theresa: He did that in three months. Well, three months after he made the declaration of ending slavery. Good on him. Which, you know, hey, well done. Um So his own officials are like this man doesn’t have the intellectual capabilities to govern a nation. 

And that’s when he’s forced to resign. They’re like, bro, doesn’t have enough IQ points. He stood next to the sign, IQ didn’t pass this point. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. That’s rough. Whether it’s true or not, but he fled to southern Mexico. 

He’s fleeing for his life, and then we have Anastasio Bustamante, his vice president that orders his assassination without a legal trial. Okay. I didn’t know that that was a thing. I thought you just, you know, exile them and call it good. I didn’t know you could order an an assassination. 

Angie: I assumed you could order an assassination. I didn’t think that a legal trial would be part of an assassination. 

Theresa: Okay, thank you. 

Angie: That’s that’s what I was trying to communicate. 

Theresa: So Valentine’s Day, 1831, Guerrero is found killed. He’s only 39 years old. But his phrase, my motherland comes first, has proliferated over time, and it reminds Mexicans that their independence wasn’t given. It was needed, and that their heroes fought for it and basically for their freedom as well. The state of Guerrero, like I mentioned earlier, is named after him, and it’s the only state to be named after a former Mexican head of state. Wow. Guerrero is located in the Costa Chica region and is home to one of several Afro-Mexican communities in Mexico. That’s really cool. 

And then tying it up a little bit more, I’m going to end it with really that uh first article that I mentioned. Africans left their cultural expressions in Mexico, music, costumes, dance, and food, as well as their genetic imprint in the states of Vietacruz, Tabasco, Michoacan, not right, Guerrero and Oaxaca. Although the race is blurry or difficult to identify thanks to a mixture of races throughout Mexican history, today there’s many terms used by black Americans to uh nope by black Mexicans to identify themselves, such as negro Moreno Astro afro… Descentante, uh Afro Mexicano Blaxican. They also self-identify as Afro Mexicans. In twenty twenty, one of the official ethnicity options in Mexico’s census form will be Negro. And that’s deemed an achievement by the black community in Mexico for having their African roots recognized. Mexican culture wouldn’t be the same today if Africans hadn’t been brought there. 

Mexico would not be what it was if someone like Vincent Guerrero, a black man, had not fought for his land and his rights, which is why he’s been called Mexico’s greatest man of color. That’s super cool. 

Angie: So I love that. Thank you for that. My absolute pleasure. I when you said I I think at the beginning you you said Mexico’s greatest man of color, and for whatever reason I heard North America’s first president, and I was like, You’re in 1810. Yeah, girl. I’m so confused. 

Theresa: No. You did it wrong again. You can’t read numbers out loud. We do this every time. 

Angie: I was like, what the and then I realized no, I heard her wrong. It was me this time. Oh wow. Okay. Well, I’m gonna I’m gonna sharp turn us. Um I’ve got, I’ve got a bit of a spooky season story for you since we’re basically there. It’s September. We’re close. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Theresa: Wait a way to pull out the decorations early, like a department store. 

Angie: Thank you so much. Um I am gonna tell you the story of the Eddie brothers. And um I think you’ll see why in just a second that I picked this particular one. Anyway, my sources are the Vermonter dot com. Eddie Brothers Spiritualism. 

Theresa: Okay, I’m gonna interrupt you real quick. Go for it. Angie is is poking at a a running joke. And for those of you who may not have heard an episode that is literally titled Everybody Loves Us But Vermont. Truly, what ends up happening without a doubt, we get thousands of downloads every month, right? Like thousands a week, right? We get more listeners from Kazakhstan than we do in Vermont. 

Angie: Like just down the road. Yeah. 

Theresa: Like it’s a good thing. We’ll look at a map of the United States of our listeners, and we will be able to clearly see everybody in the Northeast United States, but there is a white hole where Vermont is because I feel like there is some kind of firewall that outlines the entire state. And just when I’m convinced that everybody in Vermont has a VPN and is listening to us via Ireland, there will be one listener that pops up. Truly. Just the one. 

Angie: So I’m doing a story uh that features Vermont. Um my other source is Woodstock History Center.org. They have a article called the Eddie Brothers and Spiritualism. And then there is a local uh radio station called WCAX in Vermont that had a little write-up called the story of the Eddie Brothers and their illusions, and then um their Wikipedia page, which sadly was very, very lacking, but it did give me the name of their parents, so that was pretty cool. 

Anyway, the Eddie brothers are born in 1832 and 1842, respectively, William and Horatio, and they are the sons of a man called Zephaniah Eddie and his wife Julia Maycombe. Their farm is in a little town called Chittenden Rutland County, Vermont. Chittenden. 

Theresa: Chittenden sounds like a reason, and a thing I would have said out loud, and I would got slapped for as a child. 

Angie: Every time I saw it, I’m like, I’ve got to be saying this wrong. This is where they’re gonna spend their childhood. And I’m gonna be honest, it sounds really lovely to have a farm in in rural Vermont. 

Like that sounds nice. Um, but like beautiful fall foliage aside, their Wikipedia article says that they are allegedly able to trace their ancestry back to Salem, Massachusetts, 1692. Well done. Just gonna let that sit there. Now, evidently, their powers, if you will, or their occult powers, they first start showing up when the babies when the brothers are still babies. 

There are reports that say the babies would like disappear from their cradles and just simply reappear somewhere else in the house, which has got to be terrifying for mom if this is actually true. Yeah. Um I remember the first time Ethan jumped ship out of his crib and was no longer in there, but he was in the kitchen with me, and I was like, How’d you get here? And so I can only imagine that this has got to be terrifying. As they grow, they’re gonna be able to fall into this trance or what spiritual materializations. I’m not sure what that means because the way that it’s written is that it’s both. So I think they had to be in the trance for these material spiritual materializations to happen, is sort of what I’m guess guessing. Um but at school, the items would supposedly levitate near them or be hurled across the room. And as a consequence of these antics, they would both be banned from school. Banned? Because you just can’t deal with that. Yeah. 

Like a hard, you can’t come back. Now, Woodstock History Center says that their father believed that everything going on with the boys was of course the work of the devil, you know, you’ve got ghosts in your blood, that kind of thing. So in an effort to drive out the evil spirits, he quote, allegedly resorted to starving, beating, and pouring boiling water over the boys. 

His torture treatments had no effect except to physically and emotionally maim them and make them fear and hate their father. Surprise. Wild, didn’t see that coming. Now their dad, unable to get these manifest manifestations and behaviors to stop, does the most expected thing ever, and his decides he’s gonna figure out how to make money off of it instead. Oh, great. Right. So he hires them out as mediums for a traveling show. 

And for fourteen years, William and Horatio are going to travel all throughout North America and Europe with this this traveling event. The Woodstock History Center says that there’s quote uh they were quote often met with abuse as skeptics try to awaken them from their trances by drastic measures such as punching them. Others, believing that they were frauds or instruments of the devil, stoned, be burnt or shot at them. But the brothers would persist nonetheless. Now, at some point, before or in 1870, their father dies and they move home to Chittenden to be with their now widowed mom. 

Theresa: One source safe. 

Angie: Yeah. One source says that they have a sister too, but it was only mentioned in one source, so I’m not really sure how she plays into the whole thing. I couldn’t find her anywhere else. Um, but it is worth mentioning that there were other people living in their home. They convert the old farm into an inn called the Green Tavern, where not only do they lodge guests for eight dollars a week, they also hold regular seances that attract visitors from all over the the world. Because now mind you, it’s the mid-1800s, right? Like we’re in the height of spiritualism. Spiritualism. 

Right. At these seances, they’re gonna conjure up the dearly departed spirits who would then interact with the with the guests. Now both brothers claim to have strong psychic abilities from very early ages, so they both work as mediums and they would hold these seances that include ectoplasm and some sort of communic communication with spirit guides, and at these events, th I did not know this was a thing, but William would often work in a seance cabinet. Are you familiar with what that is? 

Theresa: I okay, if I’m not mistaken, a seance cabinet is basically a place for them to do their shenanigans and really kind of get the charade going. But it’s basically something around the size of a media cabinet that you would climb into so that you are alone computing with the spirits, not involved in your shenanigans. 

Angie: Yeah, uh, I understood it to be like the equivalent of an indoor phone booth. Like you get in your um it’s a c in enclosed space, the guests can see see you and see that you’re not up to any sign shenanigans, and then the curtain is gonna be closed, and this is where the medium, i.e. William in this case, would sit during the sayance. Now often he’s going to be tied up with ropes or handcuffed so that so like that he gets in and he’s handcuffed or tied so that the people can see that he can’t secretly move around. 

Theresa: So an early Houdini, but with spiritualism. 

Angie: Basically, yeah. Now, this I because I was like, I need to know more about these cabinets. This is wild. 

Theresa: Uh and Angie found one on Facebook Marketplace. 

Angie: Yeah, I bought it for twelve dollars. Um I’m picking it up this afternoon. The idea was popularized in the eighteen fifties by acts like the Devon Davenport brothers. And in this case, their cabinet would work like a battery where it would store up their psychic energy so the spirits could use it to make things happen. 

Like ring bells or bang tambourines, fling things across the room like trumpets, and all the while your medium is going to be hidden from from view. Because that doesn’t seem obvious, but anyway. Yeah. 

So anyway. Now while William is inside the seance box, Horatio is gonna sit outside a cloth screen, and allegedly spirits would play some sort of musical instruments from behind the screen. And I’m not clear exactly how this was done, but it sounds like it was just more of a in my opinion, more of a sleight of hand kind of thing. Yeah. But not real clear. Well, I mean… It should be noted. Go ahead. 

Theresa: I was just gonna say that Houdini like spent his career chasing down spiritualists and uncovering all the frauds they were doing. Right. 

Angie: Um on this particular one with the cloth screen, I just uh it wasn’t clarified to me what exactly was happening, but um it should be noted that no money was charged for their seances, so I mean, I guess fool me once it’s free. 

Theresa: There’s um there’s doing they’re doing something. There’s some scam involved, right? There’s a reason that they are investing the into this experience. 

Angie: You would think, okay. Uh yeah. Now this goes on in their tavern for about four years, and eighteen seventy-four, our guys are middle aged, they’re also illiterate. Like they because they were banned from school, they never learned how to read or write, so here we are. But they are getting some pretty good press. So much so that an investigative journalist, he is who also happens to be a lawyer from the New York area, he hears of them. Now, his name is Colonel Henry Steele Olcott, and he is a very busy and vel very respected man with a lot of stuff on his plate. So just a little background on him, because I find him absolutely fascinating. He’s born in 1832 in Orange, New Jersey, to a you know, middle class class business family. 

He is on track for a pretty elite like education, city college, then Columbia, but dad’s business goes under and he has to drop out. Oh. From I know, right? That sucks. Now from there, things get a little random for him. He goes to Ohio and he gets pulled into this whole spiritualism craze after his relatives get obsessed with the Fox sisters. Okay. 

Theresa: And we covered Fox Sisters. It had to be an April Fool’s Day episode. 

Angie: It is episode one fifteen titled So Glad You Didn’t Ask. And after his family members see the Fox Sisters and they’re like totally taken with them, they form their own little spiritualist circle. And um Olcott’s like, okay, cool. And so he kind of starts studying things like hypnotism, psychometry, mesmerism, like all the works. 

Like he was in psychometry. I didn’t look it up, but I suspect it has something to do with you know what, let’s Google it because I didn’t look it up. I need to know now. Hold please. Come on, internet. A paranormal belief in reading an object’s history through touch and the professional practice of administering psychological and neuropsychological tests. Okay. So I can I can tell the history of this object by touching it. 

Love it. So th these are the things my guy Olcott, he’s interested in. And he co-founds a spiritualist group in New York, and he starts writing under a pen name. And then he like hard pivots into journalism, and he’s covering things like agriculture of all things, which makes no sense to me, but here we are. But he also witnesses John’s Brown execu John witnesses John Brown’s execution. Wow. Right? 

Okay. In eighteen sixteen, or excuse me, eighteen sixty, he gets married to Mary Elple Morgan. She’s the daughter of the rector of Trinity Parish in New Rochelle, New York. They have four kids, but two of them die in infancy, and I think that’s important because it reminds me a lot of Sherlock Holmes. Or not Charles Holmes, but There are things, by the way. 

yeah. Um he serves in the US Army during the American Civil War, and afterwards he’s made the special commissioner of the war department in New York. He is then promoted to the rank of colonel and transfers to the Department of the Navy in DC. Following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, he’s part of the team that investigates what happens. So like this is a well to do dude. 

Theresa: He is just one of those humans that are in so many historical stories. 

Angie: Yeah, and what I thought it was really interesting because he is very crucial to their story, right? But one of the sources that I originally had said they needed to be incredibly clear that he had no dealings with the spiritualist world beforehand, and I was like, BS. Like every every other source says like he was involved. He was writing papers about it, he was studying things. Anyway, so I I nixed that source because I couldn’t it didn’t make sense to me that you would say that so ardently when everything else is like no, he was definitely doing stuff. But anyway, by 1868, he’s a lawyer that specializes in insurance revenue and fraud. So I’m thinking this guy is an investigative journalist lawyer, is going to be somebody that’s gonna need a little bit of proof to believe something truly, despite the fact that he does have this background in spiritualism. Yeah. That would be where my mind would go. 

Like he seems a little bit too logical to just buy it wholesale. Well, in 1874, he picks up this spiritualist newspaper called The Banner of Light, and the Eddie brothers are featured. Now, Ocott’s gonna do some digging on the family, and initially he’s he’s gonna learn that there are several generations of the Eddie family that claim to have these special powers. Evidently, both their mother and their grandmother were clan clairvoyants. I don’t know why we weren’t using mom in the shows to begin with. Mom’s tired. She’s raised children. 

Theresa: She felt with her husband who was that abusive. 

Angie: Yeah, it’s a whole yeah. Now, their Wikipedia article, as I say, claimed that they were the descendants of the Salem witches, which we today know in fact. They were not witches. 

But anyway, um, there’s a whole history with their family here. Now Olcott spends ten weeks with the family studying them and the seances and everything, and he simply fails to find any evidence of fraud. He sees he sees things like the levitations, wrappings, apparations, slate writing, and he finds nothing amiss. And because he finds he can’t find any Tom Foolery, he enlists a team of experts to help him because he’s like, this doesn’t feel right. 

Right. Like, what can I not what am I not seeing? And this team includes like engineers and carpenters. He hires them to determine if there’s like false panels or unknown passages he can’t find, and none of them are found. So he decides, okay, I’m convinced they are what they say they are. And his claims about the Eddie Brothers super add to their cr credibility, and they give them this handful of very powerful defenders, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a woman called the Eva Carrier, who was a medium but also claimed to produce her own ectoplasm plasma. So she’s like sharing sharing some solidarity with the brothers on this. Like, no, I can do it too. Like they’re they’re real, they’re doing it. 

Theresa: And a guy called excuting ex excluding ek exuding, that’s the word. Ectoplasm, gnarly. Would not put that on my resume, would not go on my match.com profile, not at all. 

Angie: I’m not about it. Yeah, no, I’m good. Uh there’s another gentleman called Alfred Russell Wallace, who’s a naturalist that argued against any accusations of fraud on their part. So, like, he’s got some people that are definitely in their corner, but they’ve also got some skeptics. Um they’re saying things that are this is all being done with the art of illusion, and some of those skeptics are people like Carrie Houdini. And Houdini offers a ten thousand dollar reward if the Eddies could produce a phenomenon while he controlled the conditions. I don’t know what the outcome of that was. 

Theresa: But probably didn’t get involved because Houdini would have like su shouted from the rooftops. 

Angie: That’s what I’m thinking. Um there’s another gentleman called Herewood Carrington, he’s a physical I’m gonna say this wrong. Cycle researcher. Um I was curious to see what that was, and a quick dual search tells me that it’s a researcher that investigates human experience and uh their abilities to challenge traditional science, such as things like telepathy apparitions and mediums who study paranormal claims, but they are also using organized scholarly and sometimes laboratory based based methods. 

So kind of cool. Um he writes a whole paper debunking them and he totally calls out their techniques. He’s like, no, cheesecloths for ectoplasm. They’ve got fake limbs that are made of like heavy rubber, and there’s definitely wires for levitation. But rem but remember, Oclaw never saw any of these things. So I’m like, how did you miss them? Yeah. 

Theresa: You’re right. I can write a paper all about nuclear science using that same technology or using that same methodology. Right. 

Angie: Now there’s a magician called Chung Ling So who publicly exposes their methods by basically telling everyone that it’s all ruse and this is how it was done. They’d string up a curtain across the room, toss some instruments on a table behind it, and then pull two random audience members into like as a control persons. One grips Horatio’s left arm and the other his right. So everyone’s like he can’t there’s no way he can move. 

Plot twist. Horatio evidently has a sneaky workaround, and he slips a fake hand, literally made of heavy sheet lead into the sitter’s grip, so it feels like there’s a real hand holding them. While his actual hand is quietly just like behind do, like behind his back doing things. 

Okay. Once he’s free of that, he starts manipulating the instruments so they’d float and then tap people on the head, and somehow he would be able to also get that hand through a curtain and scribble messages on the slate board for William outside. So um it’s just sleight of hand, and the magicians like BS, this is what it is. All that said, there’s some things that the skeptics can’t explain. You have sudden cold breezes and odd sense that are reported that not could not be easily explained. Some sitters were apparently levitated partly off the ground. 

And so there’s these handful of like phenomena that remain unsolved, but regardless of what people believe, whether you’re a believer or a skeptic on this, it brings tons of fame to their little neck of the woods. In their final years after Chung Lee so kind of um calls him out. There’s they’re also dealing with skepticism from other people and shifting tastes of the age. So like they’re in it in the middle of the popular, like it spiritualism being popular, but they’re also right there on the cusp of like people going back to more traditional thoughts. 

So it’s a very weird time for them. But this sort of forces the decline of their work, and both brothers end up living pretty quiet lives. William becomes a farmer in Vermont and Horatio moves to New York City. He dies in 1922. 

William dies in 1932. But without their because basically without their spirit spiritualism, they fade into obscurity. But the Vermonter.com says, quote, despite exposes, the secrets behind some of their supernatural feats remain unproven. The Eddie Brothers’ reputation as either sham artists or psychics lingered. 

Their spiritualism claims ultimately represented a divide between spiritualist believers and skeptics. They remained controversial figures long after their deaths, even until today. The mysteries and debates surrounding the Eddie brothers endured for decades and will probably never be solved definitively. Their legacy was cemented as icons of the spiritualism craze, either as hoaxes or hoaxers or legitimate mediums capable of producing inexplicable phenomenon. They go on to say debate continues on whether the feats that the Eddie brothers performed were genuine or not. Full methods behind some feats are still unknown and haven’t been debunked. The participation of unseen forces can’t be entirely ruled out. A residue of doubt persists, keeping their legacy ambiguous. The famous yet infamous Eddie Brothers left an indelible mark on the spiritualist movement and America’s fascination with the paranormal. 

Theresa: Can I just call out using words like residue in a conversation about ectoplasm? 

Angie: It’s so gross. Their involvement in spiritualism would make their tiny town the spiritual capital of the universe. And I was like, oh, that’s crazy. Another fun fact, uh, just to end on, their house is still there today, you can see it. Um and as I was looking for the Eddie Brothers, totally unrelated, I learned that there are a family of five generations of beloved missionaries that lived and worked in Lebanon, also called the Eddies at the same time. 

So looking for information on the Eddie Brothers brought me some interesting stuff. I’m like, this is not them. Yeah, I kind of love that. Yeah, I was like, uh hmm. So let’s Eddie Brothers. I do have pictures. Uh go for it. I’m here. I forgot that I had pictures. Um, I’ve only got two, but they’re pretty fun. 

Theresa: And if you are hearing she’s got pictures and you want to see, uh, we have the pictures on our Patreon and they will be included in the social media posts, so you’ll have to hunt those down. Um if you don’t want to hunt those down, join the Patreon. Okay. 

First image. There is a group of three people sitting around, men in suits. They have basically a long sheet draped over their laps. The guy on the left is holding a guitar by the neck. Neck, that’s what it’s called. Um, over the head of the guy in the middle, and they’re all holding hands. So not suspect at all. 

Angie: Not even a little bit. 

Theresa: And then you have a beautiful massive, old timey little two-story, and not little, but uh massive two-story farmhouse that’s got one, two, three, seven windows going across the top. It’s got a massive porch in the front. It’s it’s a big it’s a big home. 

Angie: Yeah, that’s that’s their home still standing today. I don’t know if it’s an inn. I’m curious to know if you could actually rent a room there today. I w I would I should have looked that up. So that’s the story of the Eddie Brothers. 

Theresa: I have loved that. If you’ve loved that, um rate where you subscribe, send this to somebody else who needs a massive set of whiplash from 

Angie: going from 

Theresa: truly the political instability of Mexico with its first and second presidents through to a brilliant hoax. 

Angie: Truly brilliant hoax. We’re still arguing about it. You know? We’ll argue too. Goodbye. 

Speaker 3: Bye.