Cora L.V. Scott: A Founder of Spiritualism

Cora Lodencia Veronica Scott was born near Cuba, New York April 21, 1840. She was raised in the Presbyterian Church, but later on joined the Universalist Church, a progressive denomination that believed God’s grace and love extended to all people, and promoted the belief that salvation would be given to all people. 

 In early 1851 She joined the Hopedale Community, an intentional community based on Progressive Christian principles of pacifism, temperance, and living and community farming, that promoted abolitionism and socialism. She found the community to be too crowded, and relocated to another community in Wisconsin where she began to experience psychic phenomena. 

Cora began to experience trance mediumship, and began to demonstrate automatic writing abilities. While in trance she would lecture on topics of spiritual and social importance and began to tour the surrounding communities giving lectures. 

After her father passed away in 1853, she moved to Buffalo, New York. Still only a teenager, she became one of the most famous Mediums in the United States. At the time a young woman speaking with eloquent authority in front of a large audience was virtually unheard of and was considered scandalous by some. Cora, with her brilliance, eloquence, and self-assurance openly challenged the Victorian opinion that only men should speak publicly, and that women needed to be meek and silent. 

Cora had the amazing gift of being able to teach very complicated spiritual lessons into a language that everyone could understand. She was incredibly versed in spiritualist teachings, philosophy, and poetry, in addition to numerology, mythology, and kabbalah. 

Cora taught that Spiritualism was a religion for all people, that every individual had direct access to the Divine Mind and the Angels, and that each and every person through acts of kindness and spiritual cultivation could achieve both inner peace, and also work to achieve world peace. 

Cora’s approach to Spiritualism was also unique in that she was one of the few early Spiritualists to actively teach the concept of reincarnation. Cora taught that our souls eternally progress and learn, but that this could take place either in the spirit world, or through rebirth in the physical world. This teaching was largely not accepted by most American Spiritualists until modern times. However, partially due to the influence of Cora's lectures, and the teachings of her students, many Spiritualists in New York State were quicker to embrace the concept of a spiritual rebirth than in other areas of the country. 

Cora was married 4 times in her life and kept each of her husbands’ names, making her full name Cora Lodencia Veronica Scott Hatch Daniels Tappan Richmond. Most people simply referred to her as “Cora Hatch,” as this was her name when she became well known as a Trance Lecturer, when she was married to her first husband, Benjamin Hatch, a Mesmerist Healer. 

 In 1874 Cora spoke in London on a lecture tour, she returned to the United States in 1875 and became the leader of a Spiritualist Society in Chicago. In 1878 her husband William Richmond began to assist her in transcribing her lectures for publication. 

In 1893 she delivered a presentation on Spiritualism at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago, and that year she was elected as the first Vice President of the National Spiritualist Association. She continued to serve as a leader, teacher, and lecturer up until her passing at age 82 on January 3rd 1923 in Chicago, Illinois.