Enter now to win a copy of
More Tales Behind the Tombstones:
More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws,
Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen
When Victoria Claflin Woodhull died on June 9, 1927, news of her passing was announced on two continents. The press referred to the controversial writer, stockbroker, and politician as a “most immoral woman.” Not only was Victoria the first woman to be officially nominated for president of the United States, but she was also one of the first individuals to have been jailed on federal obscenity charges. Both events occurred in 1872.
Before her involvement with the women’s rights movement in the mid-1860s, Victoria and her sister, Tennessee, were the owners and publishers of a newspaper called the Woodhull and Claflin Weekly. They printed scandalous articles promoting the idea of “free love.” In a letter Victoria sent to the New York Times in 1871, she claimed that free love was the “only cure for immorality, the deep damnation by which men corrupt and disfigure God’s most holy institution of sexual relations.” She continued, “It is not marriage but sexual intercourse, then, that is God’s most holy institution.” Victoria and Tennessee’s progressive views on sex and the brazen printing of those ideals appalled citizens not only in the United States but also in other countries like Germany and Russia, as well. They “threaten to destroy the morals nations so desperately needed to cling to,” was the opinion voiced in the New York Times on November 23, 1871.
Victoria and Tennessee were not strangers to confrontation with the law. Their father, Reuben Buckman “Buck” Claflin, was a scoundrel who excelled at breaking the rules of conventional society and spent time behind bars for his actions. Buck and his wife, Roxanna Hummel, lived in a rundown house in Homer, Ohio. The couple had ten children. Born on September 23, 1838, Victoria was the Claflins’ sixth child. Although Victoria’s father claimed to be a lawyer with his own profitable practice, he was actually a skilled thief with no law degree at all. He owned and operated a gristmill and also worked as a postmaster. Buck supplemented his income by stealing from merchants and business owners, and he was a counterfeiter and a suspected arsonist.
Victoria’s mother was a religious fanatic who dismissed Buck’s illegal activities in favor of chastising her neighbors for what she claimed was hedonism. Her public prayers were loud, judgmental, and dramatic. She preached to her children and insisted they memorize long passages of the Old Testament. By the time Victoria was eight, she was able to recite the Bible from cover to cover. Reflecting on her life, Victoria wrote in Autobiography of Victoria Claflin that her mother’s spiritual zeal so influenced her childhood that young Victoria believed she could see into the future and predict what was to come of those whom sought her out to preach.
Tennessee was reported to be the true clairvoyant of the family. Born in 1845, she was the last child born to Roxanna and Buck. Roxanna claimed Tennessee had the power to perceive things not present to the senses. She would slip into trances and speak with spirits, answering voices no one else could hear.
Victoria and Tennessee had very little formal education. Although Victoria attended school for only four years, she was bright, precocious, and well read. She was uninhibited and at the age of eleven delivered sermons from a busy location in Homer, Ohio.
In 1849, the Claflins left Homer and moved to Mount Gilead, Ohio. Victoria’s father had abandoned gristmill work and decided to venture into the field of psychic phenomena with his daughters in tow. He introduced Victoria and Tennessee to the public and announced the girls’ talent for “second sight” or “extrasensory perception, the ability to receive information in the form of a vision by channeling spirits.” Buck rented a theater and charged patrons seventy-five cents to watch the four-year-old and eleven-year-old communicate with deceased Claflin family members and predict the future. One such specific prediction was that one day a woman would be president of the United States.
Victoria and Tennessee’s shows, in which they would conduct séances and interpret dreams for audience members, attracted a large following, and in a short time the two young girls became the sole source of income for their family.
To learn about More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen read
More Tales Behind the Tombstones
