Seeing is Believing

A true story, in three acts.

Act 1: Elizabeth Carter Hedley

Miss Elizabeth Carter Hedley starts her photographic career in Rochester, New York in the 1860s when she’s in her 20s. She starts out as photo “colorist” (a person who adds tints of color to black and white photos), but she quickly becomes a full-fledged photographer. By 1873, she’s partnered with Miss E. Kellog to open a studio in Rochester, New York:

By the next year, she’s running a studio on her own, listing herself in the city directories as either “Miss E.C. Hedley” or “Miss L. C. Hedley” “(her first name was Elizabeth but she was known as “Lizzie”).

[By the way, both her younger brother, George, and her younger sister, Maria, are also photographers. In 1877 they both work for Lizzie’s studio; George later opens his own Hedley studio in Medina, NY. ]

Anyway, at some point in the late 1870s Lizzie is introduced to the idea of Spirit Photography. “Spirit Photos” were typically portraits taken of a person at a photo studio, where ghostly images of dead love ones miraculously appear around the person in the photo when the photo is developed. This type of photography is said to have been “discovered” by a photographer named William Mumler (or maybe really by his wife). Here’s Mumler’s most famous spirit photo:

[You can see more examples of Spirit Photos in an online exhibit of them here. ]

To get the “spirits” to appear in a photo, a person who had the “gift” of communing with the spirits needed to be in the room when the photo was taken. The photographer might be that person, or a separate “medium” might be brought in to work with the photographer to get the spirits to appear in the photo. People who sat for these photos would swear that the “spirits” were recognizable as dead family or friends.

Anyway, Elizabeth Carter Hedley soon discovers she has the ability to get spirits to appear in the portraits she takes. She is able therefore able to do it all: i.e. she takes the photo and also summons the spirits. By the late 1870s, Miss Hedley has regularly started producing Spirit Photographs in her Rochester studio.

Act 2: Mrs. Lizzie Carter

In 1880, Miss Elizabeth Carter Hedley closes her studio in Rochester and heads west. She promotes Spirit Photography as she travels, stopping in Chicago, Kansas City, and Denver (and elsewhere) to demonstrate and produce Spirit Photographs. She works in other photographers’ studios while she’s travelling, since she doesn’t have a studio of her own any more.

During this period, she also “re-brands” herself: she is now known officially as “Mrs [Lizzie or L.] Carter, Spirit Photographer.”

Lizzie Carter crisscrosses the midwest and the western U.S. repeatedly in the early 1880s; she’s promoting her services as a spirit photographer all along the way.

After ultimately settling down in California, she falls in with the Spiritualism movement there, becoming particularly involved with one of movement’s leaders, Count Peter Wilhelm  Paulson de Fagerstjerna, M.D. – aka Count of Peterhoff aka Dr. Peter W. Poulson. [For simplicity, I’ll just call him Dr. Poulson in the rest of this post.] Dr. Poulson is the founder of the several Spiritualism sects as well as being a homeopathic doctor.

BTW, here are a few sketches of Mrs. Carter taken from photographs that appeared in the newspaper accompanying articles about her Spirit Photography and involvement with Spiritualism:

At this point, events in Mrs. Carters’s life starts to veer into the area of melodrama, involving numerous photos of and conversations with spirits, plus a series of legal woes. There were accusations that the spirit photographs she produced were frauds, although she was never convicted of being a con artist. In the late 1880s, Mrs. Carter is briefly involuntarily committed to an insane asylum in California. However, she is able to leverage the support of friends to get released (she insists the entire time she’s not insane, but rather being railroaded by her enemies.)

Rather than dwell too much on the events in Mrs. Carter’s life during the years from 1881-1893, though, I want to instead fast forward to get to the events of 1894.

That’s the year Dr. Poulson dies in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Mrs. Lizzie Carter is there in Council Bluffs, Iowa when Dr. Poulson passes away — she takes a Spirit Photograph of him on his deathbed, a sketch of which is later published in the newspapers:

Mrs. Carter also reports receiving regular “visits” from Dr. Poulson’s spirit after his death; his spirit is quite chatty, apparently. Right after Dr. Poulson’s death, Lizzie is quoted in the newspaper that “she saw him murdered in a vision” {Omaha Daily Bee. April 24, 1894). She went to the authorities and demanded that an inquest be held, saying Mrs. Alice Poulson (Dr. Poulson’s widow) should be investigated for murder. (Dr. Poulson’s spirit accused his wife of having poisoned him, at least that’s what Mrs. Carter reports he said).

Things get really ugly later that year when Mrs. Carter travels back California to try to file probate on a heretofore unknown Last Will and Testament of Dr. Poulson. The existence of this will, written on silk, was purportedly revealed to Mrs. Carter by Dr. Poulson’s spirit. Conveniently, this will makes Mrs. Carter the sole heir to Dr. Poulson’s vast estate (among other properties, he even had a castle (!), Peterhof, in Oakland, CA.) This new will effectively disinherits Dr. Pouson’s widow (Alice). Here’s the headline on an article about this story:

The article recounts how both women carry weapons to defend themselves against possible attacks on their person (by the other woman).

By the way, , that sub-head is mislading. Mrs. Carter isn’t so much seeking “revenge”, as seeing to avenge Dr. Poulson’s murder, since his wife has not been charged with his murder.

Spoiler alert: it will take years to settle Dr. Poulson’s estate, but ultimately Alice Pouson will inherit everything, including the castle. Mrs. Carter gets nothing. Mrs. Alice Poulson is also never bought to trial for the murder or her husband — although some say the spirits take their revenge on her by burning down the castle down in 1901.

But I digress.

Act 3: Mrs. Dr. Anna Barton

Getting back to Mrs. Lizzie Carter: when her bid to inherit Dr. Poulson’s estate doesn’t succeed, she goes back to Iowa, working in both Council Bluffs, Iowa and also across the river in Omaha, Nebraska.

She also reinvents herself yet again. By 1895 she’s known as Mrs. Dr. Anna Barton, a woman who is a medium, a medium consultant/trainer, and also a homeopathic doctor. She is, by all accounts, no longer a spirit photographer.

Here’s one of her typical ads in this period for services she provides:

For the next few years Mrs. Dr. Anna Barton devotes herself to writing many, many letters — to the authorities, to the newspapers, to anyone who might listen — in an attempt to get Mrs. Poulson convicted of murdering Dr. Poulson. This obsession and incessant letter writing campaign backfires on her, though. As she puts it, her enemies are against her [again] and intent on proving her insane to get her locked up and put away. Eventually she winds up getting committed to an insane asylum in Iowa in 1897.

Mrs. Dr. Barton continues to write letters from the asylum, however, continuing her campaign against Mrs. Alice Poulson. So, in some sense her enemies haven’t gotten what they wanted by getting her locked up.

But then, Mrs. Dr. Anna Barton never gets what she wants either – and she never gets out of asylum again. She dies after a brief illness while still an inmate at the Clarinda Mental Health Institute in Iowa. When she dies in 1901, she is buried in the cemetery on the grounds of the asylum.

And so we come to the end of today’s three Act tragedy.

Elizabeth Carter Hedley 1835-1901
aka Lizzie Carter; aka Anna Barton
Studio and Spirit Photographer, Medium, Homeopathic Doctor

It seemed fitting to tell her story today, November 2 (All Souls Day), since she spent so much of her life making a living from communicating with the dead.

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