Call Number:

MC.801.02.005

Repository:

Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections

Extent:

.01 linear ft. (1 folder)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Letter of William Huddleston (HC.MC.801.02.005), Quaker & Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, PA.

Date:

1872

Abstract:

The letter of William Huddleston, a spiritualist, sees Huddleston reporting on his Spring 1872 efforts to run a newly-opened church out of his hometown, Lotus, Indiana. In the letter, Huddleston reports: "We have a Church in the hearing of my home, which just closed 15 days [of?] distracted meeting. I have been in attendance all of the latter party thereof; and have labored with my magnetism, Psycology [sic], and 'will' to counteract their efforts, and they have died a shameful death without a single convert..."

William Huddleston was a 19th Century Indiana atheist turned spiritualist who attained some amount of notoriety for circulating anti-religion rhetoric throughout the midwest and in his hometown of Lotus, Indiana. An article in The American Spiritualist from February, 1872, reports on Huddleston's effort to disrupt a religious convention taking place in Cincinatti by passing out copies of his 16-line poem, "Religion is a humbug", which opens with the lines, "Religion is a humbug,/The Bible is a hoax,/The Preacher's in the pulpit/Bamboozling the folks". This collected letter of William Huddleston documents an effort he made to the stymy the conversion efforts of a church that had opened up in his hometown of Lotus, Indiana.

The letter consists of four loose-leaf, lined, bifolium pages written on in pen by the author, William Huddleston, about his efforts to run a newly-opened church out of his hometown, Lotus, Indiana, in the spring of 1872.

Collection was arranged by the creator.