Royalton, 1900

Why **would a faith healer end up in Royalton, Minnesota in 1900?  H.W. Brennan (the "magnetic healer" in the first article below) was a follower of this man: John Alexander Dowie...

In 1888 he (Dowie) moved to the United States and in 1896 founded the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in Zion, Illinois, with himself as First Apostle. In 1899, he announced plans for the establishment of Zion, Illinois: a city to be free from the evil influences of modern society. In 1903 he held a two-week evangelistic healing campaign at Madison Square Garden in New York City. In 1904 he conducted an "Around the World" campaign, preaching in many countries and cities of the world.......he went to the Chicago world's fair, and had healing meetings outside the fairgrounds. These meetings were so spectacular that the front wall of the meeting room was covered with crutches, braces, and other medical paraphernalia left by those healed in the meetings.......Dowie was extremely antagonistic towards government officials and the medical profession. He regularly preached against using doctors. Some medical professionals rose up to stop his work, by suing him for practicing medicine without a license......(via Wikipedia and an online page called Healing and Revival)

                                                                                         

Evidently, Royalton was a hotbed of religious fervor in 1900.  Who knew? These articles from the St Paul GLOBE newspaper should be might be taken with a grain of salt. It seems like a fairly isolated episode, and, why Royalton?  Brennan apparently caused a stir there...not only because of the death of a 10-month-old baby (second article), but because he was denounced "from the pulpit" by a local minister.....

And, yes, Royalton had the Muncy opera house, but I doubt it had more than one doctor....

Here's the masthead from the magazine cited in the article as having "denounced" Brennan.  And, below is one of MANY CARTOONS  from it....whew!

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** Later:  Larry found a list of Dowies' converts online (!) and there was a Burton W Brannen from Royalton Minnesota listed.  Then, he found Burton Brannen in the census records from 1885 and 1900--so WOW, Brennan was local.  No wonder the controversy was in Royalton. 

We've answered our own question as to WHY...isn't that COOL?

And, isn't Larry AMAZING??