It is common knowledge that Calvin Coolidge was the most famous person ever born in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. But did you know that more than a decade before his birth there was another person from that village who gained national celebrity status? Her name was Achsa Sprague. But before relating her story, a little context is needed.
In the middle of the 19th century, there was a great stirring in the American society and a movement away from the strictures of puritanism. This was especially true in upstate New York. Utopian communities such as the one in Oneida sprang up and there were even free love societies. Women began speaking out demanding full participation in the society. The first women’s rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1847 where the movement for women’s suffrage had its beginnings. Another new popular movement with its beginnings in New York was the rise of spiritualism.
Spiritualism, which much earlier had its roots in Europe, was the belief that after someone died, their spirit continued to exist and could move on to a higher moral plane. It was believed that those spirits could communicate with living persons through someone acting as a medium. In 1848 in upstate New York, two teenage sisters, Kate and Margaret Fox, created a sensation when they claimed to be able to communicate with a person who had earlier died in their home. Joined by a third sister, they began to give public seances and spiritualism entered the mainstream of public interest.
Achsa Sprague was born in Plymouth Notch in 1827. She was a bright child and, just as Calvin Coolidge’s sister, Abigail, would do 50 years later, Achsa taught young students in the one-room school house when she was only 12 years old. Achsa continued to teach until age 20 when a mysterious illness began to affect her. Over the next seven years she became increasingly weaker and eventually became bedridden. She wrote poetry and, in her diary, stated she wished she were dead.
In February 1854 Achsa reported that she suddenly felt better and was soon up and walking. Today it is assumed that Achsa suffered from rheumatoid arthritis which often abates for a time. Achsa, however, claimed that spirits had spoken to her and had commanded her:
“Come forth from thy darkness, oh thou child of sorrow.
Come forth even though thy eyes are dimmed with
weeping, for thy grief shall be changed into gladness.”
Although she claimed she was reluctant to do so, Achsa asserted that the spirits were urging her to preach and she felt obligated to them to comply. At first, she only spoke locally but soon received invitations from all over the northern and Midwestern United States and Canada. Achsa was an ardent abolitionist, a supporter of women’s suffrage and an advocate for temperance. She became known as “the preaching lady” and had the unusual style of seeming to fall into a trance as she began her talk, claiming it was the spirits speaking through her.
In the pre-Civil War era it was still unusual for women to speak in public in such a fashion. Achsa, who tended to travel alone, was very popular with women who appreciated her call for more independence. She also received correspondence from men and had at least five marriage proposals. Achsa turned them all down unlike another famous spiritualist of the time named Cora Scott who married four times.
In January 1862 her illness reappeared. She again became bedridden and seemed to sense her end was near. For her last six months she wrote frantically and in one 72-hour period penned a 6,000-word poem. She died on July 6 of that year, only 34 years old. Today her writings are in the library of the Vermont Historical Society.
Ten years after her demise, Calvin Coolidge was born in Plymouth Notch on July 4, 1872. His parents, both natives of that small hamlet, had been teenagers during the height of Achsa’s popularity. It is quite likely they knew her and heard her lecture. It is interesting to speculate if her preaching had any effect on them or if they ever spoke of her to their son. Coolidge’s writing indicates he believed in an afterlife. Was that the result of his religious belief or of Achsa’s enduring influence on the village? It is impossible to know but what remains remarkable is that such a remote village of a few hundred people produced two such famous people within a few decades of each other.
Richard Szlosek lives in Northampton.