The Monday After: When a 'healer' came to Canton

It was in some ways worse than a case of "doctor, heal thyself."

Monday, Aug. 22, 2022

STANDING HEAD: The Monday After

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DIGITAL SUBHEAD

Gary Brown

Special to The Canton Repository

USA TODAY NETWORK

It was in some ways worse than a case of "doctor, heal thyself."

Francis Schlatter, the man who came to Canton 125 years ago to supposedly cure the afflictions of Stark County area residents, was said to be a healer. And, yet, he suddenly needed medical help for himself.

"SCHLATTER SICK" said the short headline over a brief story on Page 15 of The Sunday Repository on Nov. 21, 1897, accompanied by the longer headline, "He Sends For a Physician to Get Him In Shape For His Clinics."

The newspaper used but a single paragraph to explain both Schlatter's plight and his plans.

"Schlatter, the alleged healer, is sick and has sent for a physician," the Repository reported in the four-sentence article that followed.

"Since Schlatter came to town he has not been working. He says, however, that he will commence his work of healing the other afflicted tomorrow. He has engaged Culp's rink and will give two clinics a day at that place."

Cantonians had heard of Schlatter

This was not the first time that the man calling himself Schlatter the healer had come to Canton. Nor was this the initial time that Cantonians had read news of the "alleged healer."

A former Canton resident, Lillian Middaugh of Denver, Colorado, had in 1895 been one of the thousands of ailing individuals and curious residents who had visited Schlatter when he spent time in that Colorado city.

Middaugh had written a letter to the Repository describing what she saw during one of Schlatter's most publicized visits to her city. The missive was published Sunday, Oct. 20, 1895, in the Repository.

The woman's letter was a report so unique in its content that the newspaper felt the need to attach a disclaimer to it when it was published, indicating that "the Repository gives correspondents' views as news (but) their opinions may or may not be endorsed by this paper; they have the right to them, just the same."

In her letter, Middaugh claims to have seen the "Great Healer," who she called "the most wonderful human being," who "stands, bare-headed, in rain or sun, giving by a simple touch of his hand, without money and without price, health and happiness to multitudes afflicted with diverse diseases."

"He is a man, probably sixty years of age, about five feet, five inches in height, wears a suit of gray of modern cut, has dark brown hair, hanging in loose curls about his shoulders, deep set blue eyes, clean cut features, with a slight mark on his nose, a complexion browned by exposure to sun and wind ... a holy look, not unlike pictures one requently sees representing Christ."

Middaugh noted that Schlatter fasted "forty days and forty nights before beginning his work of healing."

"He stands inside the fence enclosing the grounds," she wrote. "A railing has been put outside the fence, making a passage way where all who wish to touch his hand must take their place and await their turn. ... He takes each by the right hand with a firm grasp, and holds the patient's handkerchief clasped tightly in his left hand; his lips move as in prayer and his eyes have a faraway look in them."

Letter offered examples of cures

Schlatter's healing work was given mixed reviews by the public in Denver.

"There is a diversity of opinion concerning him," Middaugh wrote, "some denouncing him as an imposter without any power, taking advantage (of desperate people); others ready to acknowledge him to be anything, even Christ himself, and letters come addressed to 'The Divine One,' 'The Messiah,' 'The Savior.'"

It was obvious from her letter that Middaugh believed Schlatter to be a man with a generous heart and much healing ability.

"There is no longer any doubt that he has healed many," she wrote. "Physicians, whose own patients have been restored to health by him, testify to the fact."

Middaugh wrote of examples of healing taking place in Denver.

A young woman who had been "suffering with impaired vision and paralysis of the right arm" visited Schlatter at his white cottage "felt better soon after leaving him and when she reached home could see and could move her arm as though it had never been affected."

A man who was thrown from a wagon a decade before and crippled "threw away his crutches thirty minutes after he had seen the healer."

"The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, but in no case has anyone asked to be cured of sin."

Words from those who knew him

Schlatter's neighbors in Jamesport on Long Island, New York, saw him as an odd individual, a studious sort, who was "a good fellow," but "a little queer" − quite peculiar, by their definition − in his actions.

"Some of Schlatter's friends say he is 'off,' while many residents say he never was quite right in his head," reported an article published in the Repository on Nov. 28, 1895.

Although former Cantonian Middaugh had written to the Repository, describing Schlatter's healing touches in biblical terms − "One cannot but be impressed with the resemblance to the scenes recorded in the Bible, of the time when Christ was upon the earth and the people came from far and new in their anxiety to touch Him." − residents of Jamesport recalled that he rarely went to church and wasn't a religious man while he lived there.

A reporter sent to the healer's hometown found that while residents there were excited to talk about the shoemaker-turned-healer, they seemed "amused" at the story of his supposed cures in Denver.

"Whatever may be true of the cures of the healer in the west, his prescriptions do not work on his Jamesport friends, who have communicated with Schlatter in Denver," the 1895 article said. "The reporter interviewed a number of people, and on the promise of their names being withheld was told how they had received handkerchiefs and other articles from Schlatter with directions how to become new in health and body. The good folks tried his cures with all the faith imaginable, but their ailments did not disappear."

Visits Canton two years later

When Schlatter made multiple stops in Canton in 1897 − or at least a man claiming to be "Schlatter, The Healer" made visits − he was greeted with a reception that was both hopeful and suspicious.

Schlatter, you see, was reported to have died up to two years earlier, sometime after his Denver stay.

"On the night of November 13, 1895, he suddenly disappeared, leaving behind him a note in which he said that his mission was ended," said an online profile of Schlatter. "Then, in 1897, news came out of Mexico that the healer's bones and possessions had been found on a mountainside in the Sierra Madre."

The Repository reported the supposed discovery of Schlatter's body. "Death of 'Divine Healer' Schlatter," said the headline over a small Associated Press article datelined June 7 from El Paso, Mexico, and published in the Repository on that date in 1897.

"Francis Schlatter, who claimed to perform miraculous cures by divine power, was recently found dead in the foot hills 85 miles southwest of Casa Grande in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico," the article continued. "He had been fasting and apparently starved to death. While in Denver, from August 22 to November 13, 1895, about 200,000 people visited Schlatter to receive treatment."

But, were they really Schlatter's remains? There was speculation that Schlatter faked his own death and then, after time away from the public frenzy, returned to the United States to continue healing. Indeed, a relatively recent book, "The Vanishing Messiah: The Life and Resurrections of Francis Schlatter" published in 2016, "argues that the healer conspired to stage his death in the mountains of Mexico and returned to the United States to continue healing in the eastern and southern parts of the country until his death in St. Louis in 1922," according to the online profile of Schlatter.

The New York Times expressed doubts about Schlatter's "death," the online profile notes. "It does not appear that the human remains were actually identified as Schlatter's," the newspaper stated on June 19, 1897, "or that any identification was possible."

During the years that followed, several men claimed to be Francis Schlatter, so the "Schlatter" who stopped in Canton in the summer 1897 could have been the real "healer" or an imposter.

Crowds grew tired of Schlatter

"The question whether the Schlatter in Canton is the man who created such a stir in Denver a little over a year ago is still unanswered, other than by the word of the alleged Schlatter," reported a front-page story in the Repository on Sunday Aug. 15, 1897.

"He says: 'On September 17, 1895, I treated 37,000 people in Denver during the day and retired that day completely exhausted. I know nothing as to what happened until I awoke two days later lying under a large tree in a vacant lot in Pueblo (Colorado). I had scarcely left my place of rest under the tree when a large branch that was just above my head when I had been sleeping parted from the tree and fell to the ground. Since that time I have been wandering about various parts of the country doing what good I could in the way of relieving the suffering."

So, it's possible that the real Schlatter could have wandered to Canton two years later.

City residents, for the most part, were not impressed.

"During his stay in Canton Schlatter has treated thousands of people and only a very few of them have reported that they have been permanently helped," the Repository reported. "From the hundreds of afflicted ones that have been treated and not benefitted his managers furnish never a word.

"There are more strange faces in the crowds that surround the store box from from day to day which would indicate that the Canton people are already tiring of him and that the most of his crowd is now coming from some other place. The thousands of handkerchiefs that have been 'blessed' during his stay are not bearing much fruit as very few reports of any benefit from them are received."

The newspaper gave as as example of the dissatisfied a man named L.M. Barrick, "another citizen of Canton who was treated by Schlatter and failed to receive any benefit from the treatment."

"Mr. Barrick is afflicted with a distressing nervousness and after several treatments he still has his nervousness with him. And so it goes. As high as 300 people have passed before Schlatter in a half hour and it is only a very small percent of them that claim to have been benefitted by him."

After a few weeks, Schlatter traveled to Cleveland for a time, with his healing performance and community reception found to be much the same as in Canton. Later in the year he returned to Canton.

By November of 1897 Schlatter still was in the city, but he was himself sick. It could be presumed that he had plenty of handkerchiefs that could be blessed, but he sent for a "healer" − a Canton doctor − instead.

Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com. On Twitter: @gbrownREP.

This article originally appeared on The Alliance Review: The Monday After: When a 'healer' came to Canton