Chase, Warren (1813-1891)
Chase, Warren (1813-1891)
One of the first apostles of Spiritualism in America. Born in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, Chase began to study mesmerism in Southport, Wisconsin, by 1843. He was street commissioner and road master at the time, and discussed both this subject and Charles Fourier's scheme of socialism in the local lyceum through that winter. The result was a socialist settlement in May 1844 in Fond-du-Lac County. The Wisconsin Phalanx, as the community was known, lasted for six years. It was the only one of the experiments that yielded, at the time of dis-solution, substantial profit to its members. After the dissolution Chase began to take a more active part in politics, became a senator in Wisconsin in 1848, and was nominated for governor the following year.
The philosophy of Andrew Jackson Davis made a deep impression on him, and when the Spiritualist movement was born, he became its untiring apostle for over thirty years. His Spiritualist experiences are embodied in his Forty Years on the Spiritual Rostrum (1888) and his socialist activities in The Life Line of the Lone One, an Autobiography of the World's Child (1857).
Sources:
Chase, Warren. Forty Years on the Spiritual Rostrum. Boston, 1888.
——. The Life Line of the Lone One, an Autobiography of the World's Child. Boston: B. Marsh, 1857.
Noyes, John Humphrey. Strange Cults & Utopias of 19th Century America. 1870. Reprinted as History of American Socialisms. New York: Dover Publications, 1966.