Once again we engaged a hall, at our own expense, and gave notice to the public that Mr. Ambler would deliver a lecture, and “the three sisters would accompany him on the platform.” The hall was crowded. The lecturer was eloquent and the audience pleased. The rappings were profuse. Public opinion had changed since the first lectures on the subject. Friends rushed to the platform to congratulate us on our triumphant success.
Many good wishes for our happiness and prosperity in our great enterprise were showered upon us; and we little dreamed that we had given our last public entertainment to our true and tried friends in Rochester. We did not even imagine that we were then leaving our dear old home for a new one in a new city, when the proper time should arrive. There was much and arduous consultation respecting the mode in which we should go forth into the world on the travels and toils that lay before us.
Our father had been interrupted in all his business arrangements, and could not possibly leave home, and Calvin, who had grown up in our family (a son and brother by adoption), was the best personal protector we could have. We left with our father’s sympathy and blessing.
We reached Albany the last of April, 1850. We engaged a suite of rooms in the Delavan House. Mr. Ambler was our lecturer, and Mr. Coman our business man—mother, Maggie, Katie, and myself, with Calvin as our escort. We engaged Van Vechten Hall. It had been previously announced through the papers that “the Fox Family” would appear at the hall, with Mr. Ambler, who would deliver a course of lectures, preparatory to our giving séances at the Delavan House.
Our career was now commenced. After all our resolving not to go any more before the public, we had been forced to let the world know what was revealed to us, and what was meant not for us alone.
Our rooms were thronged by the élite of Albany and of many other places adjacent. Our success was great, as the spirits had promised. We received both public and private parties from all parts of the country.
The spirits had performed their parts admirably for nearly two weeks, when I received a note from the editor of the Albany Morning Express.
(It will be remembered that at one of the Rochester investigations, a Second Advent minister had deemed it his duty to rise in public and express his idea that all this was of diabolic origin, and that we, the mediums, ought to be sent to prison. But the good old days of Cotton Mather and of the hangings at Salem were past, and after the conscientious but narrow bigot resumed his seat, no further notice was taken of the good man or of his suggestion. I may remark in passing, that the spirits who extorted from Mr. MacNaughton the Lord’s Prayer, which he had been taught in childhood to repeat at the knees of his “puir auld mither,” and had converted him to Spiritualism and a belief in the immortality of the soul, would seem to have been strange emissaries of Satan.)
At Albany we met a somewhat similar experience, both in the attempt made against us and in its results. A certain respectable minister, I do not know of what denomination, named Dr. Staats, was so far exercised in his mind by the reports of our meetings at the Delavan House, that he applied to the courts for a warrant for our arrest. I had the surprise of receiving the following note from the highly respected editor of the Morning Express:
“Albany Morning Express,
“May 13, 1850.