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The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear: Agitator for the Spirit Land

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Dr. Buescher is to be commended for this masterpiece of comprehensive, detailed, richly anecdotal biography of a man so diverse in his passions as to make your head swim. And for this reason perhaps this book may not become as well know as it should- though I certainly hope otherwise. John Murray Spear was an epitome of trying to live so altruistically for his fellow disenfranchied beings that like Ariel he moved on the winds of each social progressive movement that manifested itself in 19th century America.

This book for the first time gives you the entire alternative landscape of fringe religion, social movements and experiments through the almost Baron Munchausen inner adventures of Spear. From passionate Universalist, abolition, prisoner rights, (Spear & his brother should be honored as the father of the parole movement alone), feminism, free love and finally culminating in Spiritualism. Finding a spiritual home at last he becomes an apostle of this new movement and was instrumental as a first generational Spiritualist in taking the new dispensation to England.

Additional fascinating pieces of this superb book includes for the first time a detailed history of the entire "New Motor" experiment. I recall as a child first reading tantalizing tidbits in fortean paperbacks about this Victorian "Frankenchrist" event that boggled my childish mind with gothic pleasure & beginning theology. I also discovered for the first time the Spiritualist/sewing machine connection- you'll have to read the book for this one. And unless one reads a history of the Oneida colony, you'll not find a more comprehensive survey of the free love movement in America. I hope that a copy of this work may find itself falling into the hands of a Tim Burton or Terry Gilliam, no other director could capture the visual sheer surreality of the life of the Reverend Spear. Giddily recommended.

"The Remarkable Life Of John Murray Spear: Agitator For The Spirit Land" by John Buescher (Chief of the Tibetan Broadcast Service of the Voice of America) is the biography of one of 19th century America's most idiosyncratic and radical religious figures whose flamboyant spiritualist proclivities led him to protest slavery and capital punishment, invent 'spirit machines', and perhaps most surprisingly -- advocate 'free love'. While Spear help organize public support for anarchist, socialist, peace, and labor causes, his personal life was an eccentric mixture of the comic and the profane and provides contemporary readers with a remarkable perspective on 19th century American religious and social life. An impressive body of well research and superbly written detail, "The Remarkable Life Of John Murray Spear" is informative, entertaining, and very highly recommended reading on the life and times of a remarkable distinctive man who helped to shape American history.

This is a proud legacy for John Murray Spear - to have his life and times depicted by John Buescher, someone so devoted to historical fact and sensitive to the motives and paradoxical moments of the pioneer days of Modern Spiritualism. Spear, an early practitioner of that belief, is also one of the 19th century's most colorful characters. He is rendered here with a deft touch and keen perception by scholar and historian Buescher who meticulously researched and wrote an earlier, wide-ranging book featuring Spear, "The Other Side of Salvation: Spiritualism in the Nineteenth-Century Religious Experience." The author's skills truly shine in this immensely readable biography of the magnetic Spear's inventive and eccentric persona -- a healer and medium who attracted a multitude of devoted supporters and endorsed the ambivalent tenets of "Free Love" plus a number of colorful (if not downright crazy) plans for a utopian community at Kiantone, New York (near Jamestown). Spear also possessed a frantic commitment to development of his New Motor Project (near Lynn, Massachusetts) which seemed to cause his nubile assistant, Caroline, to become pregnant with a child that - surprisingly! - strongly resembled the married Spear. John Buescher is the genius behind the wonderfully inclusive [..] and here he has authored an entertaining and illuminating book for anyone with an appetite for nineteenth century religious doctrines and their idiosyncratic practitioners. Spear is depicted as engaging, funny, thoughtful, flamboyant, and true to his convictions. Buescher treats his subject with authority and warmth. It's a great read. I highly recommend it.