May 18, 2024 • 32 mins
This 2014 episode covers Aimee Semple McPherson, an extraordinary figure in the early 20th-century religious landscape. As an evangelist, she rose to incredible popularity in the 1920s, and then vanished.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. Evangelist Amy Simple McPherson disappeared while out for
a swim on May eighteenth, nineteen twenty six, so ninety
eight years ago today if you're listening on the day
this episode came out, So for today, we have our
episode on her and her disappearance as Today's Saturday Classic.
(00:22):
This originally came out on November nineteenth, twenty fourteen. Enjoy
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hello One, Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Wilson, and we're going to talk about an evangelist today,
an evangelist who broke all kinds of barriers and rose
to incredible popularities in the nineteen twenties and then vanished.
And there are still mysteries surrounding that disappearance, but they
might not be the mysteries you would expect. Just in
the interest of expectations management, we're not really going to
(01:03):
dig particularly deep into this evangelist's religion and doctrines. We'll
talk about it as it relates to the events of
her life and sort of how she became famous and
then had this sort of huge public turning point. But
in the interest of time and sticking to history rather
than theology, we're not going to break down her views
in relation to other Christian views. And there were certainly
(01:24):
some debates and disagreements within the church about sort of
how she handled things versus how other sects handled things,
and we're not really digging into that. She's also a
person whose life is extremely well documented. So if you
have heard of this person and you may know her story,
you may be like, hey, they didn't mention X, Y
or Z. That's because this podcast runs very long already,
(01:46):
and we're kind of just trying to cover what sort
of led, as I said, to her fame and sort
of how that built up and then how her life
shifted pretty suddenly. So if we've left anything out, it's
really for the interest of time and kind of trying
to keep the story on track, because there are many,
many different things we could talk about in relation to her.
(02:07):
But the person we're talking about, in case you were
wondering or maybe even guest, is Amy Simple McPherson, and
she was absolutely a really extraordinary figure in early twentieth
century religious landscape. She preached both in the US and abroad,
and at a time when most women were expected to
stick to the roles of wife and mother, Amy dedicated
(02:28):
herself above all to her ministry and opened the door
for other women to be religious leaders on that sort
of huge scale public level. So first we will talk
about sort of her origins.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Amy Elizabeth Kennedy was born on October ninth, eighteen ninety
in Ontario, Canada. Her parents were James Morgan Kennedy and
Mildred Pierce Kennedy, and they were very religious. James was
the organist and choir director of their Methodist church, and Many,
as her mother was called, had been raised by Salvationists
(03:01):
after being orphaned as a child, and Amy was a
little bit rebellious by nature. Early on in her life,
she kind of went through a phase where she eschewed
her parents' religion. Dad appears to have been brief.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And kind of just one of those developmental phases where
like young adults sort of test their parents in their boundaries,
because later she rebelled even more vehemently against the teaching
of evolution in her school. She really spoke out against
the theory of evolution a lot throughout her life. That's
another thing that we're not going to go into depth in,
but if you wanted to research that, there's certainly a
(03:36):
wealth of information about it. By the time she graduated
high school, though, Amy was very devoted to her faith.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
When Amy was just seventeen, she got married for the
first time. Her groom, Robert Semple, was an Irish Pentecostal
missionary that she'd met at a revival that had been
really pivotal in cementing her commitment to her religion. He
was ten years older than she was, and the two
of them got married on August twelfth, nineteen oh eight,
and the Kennedy's Apple Orchard. Robert's missionary work took them
(04:06):
to Stratsford, Ontario, and then London, Ontario, and eventually Chicago,
Illinois in early nineteen oh nine, and there they were
both ordained as ministers. They started touring the United States
and Canada on evangelical tours, and back when Robert and
Amy were still courting, they had actually hatched this dream
together of serving as missionaries in China, and after their
(04:30):
were datement and their early faith tours in North America,
they really felt like they were ready and it was
time to make their move. Into international ministry, so in
nineteen ten, they left Chicago. In her autobiography The Story
of My Life, Amy described the final exchange in their
decision to leave for Asia as her husband putting his
(04:50):
arm around her and saying, Darling, I feel the time
has come for us to leave for China, and her
reply was I am ready, Robert, anywhere in the world
with you.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
And the Simples did not go directly to China. They
first went to Belfast, Ireland to visit Robert's home and
his family, and from there they traveled to London. They
also traveled to the Suez Canal before eventually making their
way to Asia, and they arrived in Hong Kong in
June of nineteen ten, and at this point Amy was pregnant.
She was very pregnant. She was into her third trimester.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Just a few weeks after they got to Hong Kong,
both Amy and Robert got sick, and they had both
contracted malaria. While Amy recovered, Robert eventually died from his
illness on August nineteenth, nineteen ten. So young missus Semple
found herself pregnant and penniless in a foreign country and
(05:46):
a widow at the age of nineteen, and because at
this point she was so late in her pregnancy and
she was still in a week in state from her
own bout of malaria. She had not recovered fully, but
she was close to recovery. Amy had to stay in
Hong Kong even after Robert had died, and so she
gave birth to her daughter, ROBERTA. Starr, just a month later,
(06:08):
still in Hong Kong, on September seventeenth. And although Robert
was gone, he continued to be a really significant influence
in her life. Yeah, there have been some discussions if
you read in various autobiographical accounts of hers and also
biographies written by others, that kind of hinted the fact
that because Robert died when they were still very early
(06:31):
in their marriage and she was very young, and he
became a little bit idealized in her head and kind
of became this model of perfection. And there have been
some debates among historians about if Robert had lived, would
she have still held him in the same high esteem
for the rest of her life, or would they have
settled into a more mundane sort of equals relationship instead
(06:53):
of sort of the hero worship that she carried with her,
but not long after the arrival of her daughter. About
a month after Roberta was born, Amy made her way
back to the United States, and this time she settled
in New York City and her mother joined her there,
both to help the new mother out and because Many
had an interest in working with the Salvation Army, Amy
(07:15):
also did the same thing, and they both worked to
collect money, like they would go into movie theaters and
collect money, and they also served food and the rescue
mission there. It wasn't long before she met an accountant
named Harold Stewart McPherson in the city, and the two
of them became friends and then gradually started courting. Many
wasn't really enthusiastic about the relationship. She was concerned that
(07:39):
Amy's involvement with Harold would lead her away from her
religious calling. Yeah, all of their work with the Salvation
Army had really cemented, certainly for Minni and to Amy
as well, that you know, ministry of one form or
another was going to be her her life's work. And
even though Minni did not oppose Harold as a person,
(08:00):
since she didn't find anything wrong with him, she was
just worried that, like falling in love again was going
to kind of derail the vision that Amy had for
her life, and in fact that kind of came true
for a bit. In nineteen eleven, Amy moved with her
daughter Roberta, to Chicago, where she married Harold on October
(08:20):
twenty fourth of that year, and less than a year
into their marriage, the McPherson's moved to Providence, Rhode Island,
and on March twenty third of nineteen thirteen, the couple
welcomed their son, Ral Potter McPherson. He eventually his middle
name changed from Potter, which had been I believe the
doctor who delivered him, to Kennedy, which had been her
maiden name, and away from Potter. Amy had been involved
(08:44):
with their church in Chicago, but her religious fervor really
intensified after Roth was born. She made a go of
a life as a housewife and Providence for several years,
but to be really blunted, she was unhappy. Harold had
hoped that she would find fulfillment in motherhood and life
as his wife, but it just didn't work out that way.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
And at one point. One thing that comes up repeatedly
throughout any biography of hers is that she sort of
had like a long series of just odd health struggles.
And at one point during this time, Amy became very
very ill. She required a hysterectomy, she had to have
surgery for an appendicitis. Her condition was very grave. They
(09:25):
had called her mother to the hospital because they thought
she was going to die, so Harold had made sure
the family note was going on. And during this time,
when she was you know, lingering near death, Amy describes
being called to by a voice, which she believed to
be God, saying now will you go, and she felt
that she would answer with yes, she would indeed go.
(09:48):
She knew it would either be to the afterlife or
to ministry, and at that point she just gave herself
over to whatever was going to happen. And she immediately,
she said, felt the pain leave her body. And after that,
over the course of the next several weeks, she made
a full and rather rapping into some description's almost miraculous recovery.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Her health turnaround convinced Amy that the only path for
her was full time ministry. She packed up the kids
and left Harold while he was out one night in
June of nineteen fifteen. First she went to her parents'
farm in Canada, where she dropped off the children, and
then she sent Harold a telegram that read, I have
tried to walk your way and have failed. Won't you
(10:29):
come now and walk my way. I'm sure we will
be happy. Amy had basically chosen the ministry over Harold,
and in turn, Harold, when he received this note, decided
he would choose Amy over life. In Rhode Island, he
followed her, and he joined her in her ministry, traveling
from tent revival to tent revival, and he would travel
(10:51):
ahead of her to the new sites and make sure
that they had all the required permits to have these revivals,
and that you know, tents were set up and all
the needs are arranged, so that her ministry could just
run smoothly and she could focus on the religion and
her message and not have to worry about all the sundry,
mundane sort of nuts and bolts of setting up these events.
(11:12):
After the first two years of traveling revival ministry, Amy
also started up a magazine called The Bridal Call to
spread her messages and her teachings through the written word,
so much as a modern day personality might try to
expand their reach using social media to engage with an audience.
Amy's magazine drew her new followers.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yeah, it was very popular. And while she felt that
she was following her calling and doing all of this,
Harold really always felt like he was just following Amy.
He continued to hope that she would somehow find happiness
in their family and fulfillment in their marriage, but his
hopes never manifested. You know, he sort of recognized that
(11:53):
he was just kind of a secondary part of her life.
And Amy remained devoted to her ministry, agree to her
deceased first husband who had really sparked this passion for
evangelical preaching in her, and those elements combined with this
life on the road, which was really rudimentary. You read
about them kind of washing their clothes and streams and
(12:16):
sleeping outside at night and having to deal with, you know,
bugs out in camping situations and just you know, it
was not a life of luxury by any means, and
it really started to take a toll on their marriage.
So Harold eventually returned to Providence and they were divorced
late in the summer of nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
From nineteen nineteen on, Amy's ministry really took off, and
her approach had always been really entered denominational, but she
wound up being credentialed by a number of churches as
though she was actually affiliated with their official ministries, even
though she had never sought out those credentials. She was
very well liked and gained a devoted following, so a
lot of churches just wanted to have her associated with
(12:56):
them in some way, And in addition into being welcoming
to all people, her revivals and sermons were different from
a lot of what had come before in that they
were very positive in tone. She focused on the loving,
accepting image of Jesus rather than preaching as many ministers
did at the time, and had for many years of
sort of the more vengeful fire and brimstone vision of God.
(13:19):
And faith healing was also an important part of her ministry,
and her sort of uplifting spirituality and her passionate but
upbeat and cheerful approach to the whole thing was incredibly
appealing in post World War One America. It was different
and it was fresh, and people were really drawn to it.
On top of her traveling ministry and her magazine, Amy
also started publishing books in the late nineteen teens. She
(13:42):
was a prolific writer and produced numerous volumes about herself
and her teachings over the years, including This Is That
and Divine Healing Sermons.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
In nineteen twenty one, Amy decided that it was really
time to find a permanent home for her ministry, and
she bought land near the Echo Park neighborhood in Los Angeles, California,
to begin fulfilling a mission that she believed God had
given her, which was building the Angelus Temple there. And
this was a time when Los Angeles was growing at
a really incredible rate, so Amy was sort of smart
(14:14):
slash fortunate one or the other or both to secure
the land for the temple. When she did, she kind
of got in just as the real estate market was
really about to explode. To raise funds for the construction,
she spent the next two years on a rigorous tour,
first driving back and forth throughout the United States, traveling
as was usual, with her mother and children in the car.
(14:36):
Then she expanded her ministry and the financing of the
temple with a tour of Australia. And it was while
she was touring the US in nineteen twenty two, so
during this sort of fundraising tour that Amy, while she
was giving a sermon in Oakland, California, was inspired to
envision what would eventually become the Four Square Church, which
(14:59):
she found, and this was based on the four identities
of Jesus that she was preaching about as a savior,
as a healer, as a baptizer in the Holy Spirit,
and as the coming King. Finally, on New Year's Day
of nineteen twenty three, the Angelus Temple was dedicated. It
could seat five three hundred people, and the Four Square
(15:20):
Church was founded there, although it took several years for
that to be formally incorporated, and later in nineteen twenty three,
she also founded the Lighthouse for International Four Square Evangelism
Bible College so that she could educate others to be evangelists.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
In nineteen twenty four, she gave a sermon on the
radio for the first time at Los Angeles station KFSG.
Later she'd become the first woman to be issued a
license to operate a radio station. And yeah, she was
really reaching out into new markets. She often talked about
as something of a contradiction because in many ways she
(15:59):
was preaching really like you know, old school values, but
with a very sort of modern approach to how she
was spreading this word, and so like the magazines and
the books and the radio appearances, it was all sort
of Some people found it hard to reconcile her traditionalist
values and her modern approach to spreading them. But basically,
(16:20):
her popularity was soaring, and just as it reached a
fever pitch, she was one of the most famous people
in the United States, and indeed she had a pretty
big global following, she vanished. And before we talk about
what happened and sort of how that all played out,
do you like to take a word from a sponsor.
I would.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
By the mid nineteen twenty she was preaching up to
twenty sermons a week, and her writing was regularly published.
She was overseeing the training of her ministerial proteges, and
she was sort of running the business of the church,
and she was, as we said before the ad break,
just incredibly popular.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
On May eighteenth, nineteen twenty six, Amy, who was working
on a sermon, went to the beach at the urging
of her mother to take a much needed break from working.
She went with her secretary, Emma Schaeffer, so that she
could keep working on her sermon. In reviewer notes, Amy
decided she needed a break and she went into the
water for a swim.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
And she did not return from that swim. At the
services that were scheduled that evening for Amy to prechat,
she did not appear, and instead her mother, Minnie, gave
the sermon in her place. And at the end of
the service, many quietly announced what had already been rumored
throughout the city all afternoon, and it was now appearing
in the local evening papers. Sister, as Amy was called
(17:46):
in her ministry, had gone to the beach at Ocean
Park and had vanished while swimming. Sister is gone, Many
announced to the congregation, we know she is with Jesus.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
The next day, a full tilt investigation went into year.
There were dozens of reporters and hundreds of onlookers that
appeared on the beach to see what was happening. As
the investigation got underway.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
The Coast Guard had boats traversing the coastline. They were
looking for something, anything that might offer a clue as
to what had happened to this beloved evangelist. Teams of
divers scoured the waters in search of a body or
of clues, and one diver actually lost his life in
the search effort. There was also another fatality when a
(18:30):
young woman who had been a member of the Church
of the Four Square Gospel, who was just grief stricken
at the loss of their spiritual leader, actually drowned herself.
On Memorial Day, which was twelve days after the disappearance,
the Angelus Temple was packed. More than twenty five thousand
people showed up at the beach where Amy had vanished
to grieve and set out remembrances. Police were concerned at
(18:54):
what might happen if her body were to be found
that day, so they worked on action plans for handling
that kind of grim discovery. It did not happen, but
they were definitely like ready to kind of address potential
crowd control issues, and eventually, you know, this was now
a couple weeks in church members finally accepted that Amy
must have died, and in effort to recover the body,
(19:16):
they actually the church actually paid to have the bay
dynamited in the hopes that the body would surface somehow,
but it did not.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Some members of the church believed that she would be resurrected,
and so they prayed and waited for her to return,
and Minnie her mother arranged a memorial service at the temple,
and that was scheduled for June twentieth, and more than
seventeen thousand people showed up, far too many than they
could fit in the building. While all of that morning
(19:44):
was going on, there had been a whole other school
of thought about what had happened to Amy. Rumors began
to circulate that Amy had probably not died, but had
instead purposely removed herself from the public eye for some
possibly nefarious person reason. There were whispers of plastic surgery,
talk of affairs, a pregnancy that she might intend to abort,
(20:07):
and all of these rumors made their way around California
and eventually the country. Really a detective claimed to have
spotted her at a train station, and more sightings started
to crop up after that. This will no doubt sound
familiar if you've listened to our Judge Creater episode or
any other missing person story. Almost every day throughout the
(20:28):
United States, papers ran stories of the latest Amy sightings.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
There were also two ransom letters that came about. The
first one that Minnie Kennedy Amy's mother received, made it
clear that police should not be involved and that she
should turn over fifty thousand dollars if she wanted to
see her daughter again. The second letter, which came a
bit later, said that Amy was going to be sold
into slavery if a ransom of half a million dollars
wasn't paid, but they really thought she was dead at
(20:55):
this point and that these might be hoaxes. Three days
after her mother memorial service, Amy Simple McPherson emerged from
the Mexican desert in Agua Priezza, Sonora, a small Mexican
town just south of the border from Douglas, Arizona. She
collapsed after telling a couple that she had escaped from
(21:16):
kidnappers and had been traveling on foot for hours. Amy
was of course rushed to the hospital and after that
a phone call was made to her mother, and authorities
working with her mother were able to confirm the evangelist's
identity based on information Many provided about a scar that
was on Amy's finger, and after Amy was able to
(21:36):
provide the name of her pet pigeon, which Mini wanted
for validation that it was the correct person. So at
this point the lost beloved administer was found.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
After she was able to recuperate, she gave an account
of what had happened to her. She said she'd been
lured by a couple to their car as she got
out of the water from swimming. They told her they
had a sick baby that they wanted her to pray over,
and when she leaned into the back seat to see
the child, which was not there, she was pushed down
into the floorboards and then drive it away.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
And according to her account, she had been held by
a woman named Rose, a man named Steve, and another man.
And she said that she had been drugged and tortured
and kept in a shack, and that she had eventually escaped.
She wriggled out of the ropes that she had been
tied with and ran through the desert and estimated twenty
miles before she reached Agua Prieta Douglas, Arizona, where Amy
(22:33):
was hospitalized, became the focus of national attention. Reporters and
followers poured into the town. The telegraph lines were overloaded
with well wishes, and her story was headline news. But
for some people the tide actually turned. Similar to how
there were people that didn't think her disappearance quite added up.
(22:55):
There were some people that thought her reappearance also had
some suspicious elements to it. The Coachee County sheriff was
suspicious of her story. He thought that the condition of
her clothing was far too tidy to have been through
what she claimed it happened. Additionally, police from both Douglas
and Agua Prieto were unable to find any traces of
(23:16):
the kidnappers or a shack in the area that she
had described. She even accompanied search teams into the desert,
but was unable to find the shack herself. McPherson had, however,
received multiple threats through the years as her fame grew,
so some people sort of held that up as you know,
evidence that this was entirely plausible. There had been people
(23:38):
threatening to do things to her, to kill her, and
even to kidnap her for a while. Just a year
prior to the disappearance, a plot to kidnap amy had
been discovered and foiled by the LAPD.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Before we talk about what happened after she got home,
let's have a brief word from a sponsor. As Amy
and her mother headed back to Los Angeles from Arizona,
the train that they were in was basically greeted all
along the way by well witchers, so whether they stopped
(24:13):
or not, sort of every town that they went through
there were people by the sides of the tracks kind
of waving, throwing flowers, et cetera. But even as they
got back to Los Angeles, the media circus around her
alleged kidnapping was really just beginning. Not only did papers
have new suspicious persons to mention on an almost daily
basis that they thought could be, you know, the possible
(24:35):
perpetrators of this kidnapping, but speculations about Amy's own possible
involvement in some sort of deception were also abundant. An
engineer at the radio station owned by Angelus Temple had
disappeared at the same time as Amy, which led some
people to speculate that the two of them had been
having an affair. The man in question, Kenneth Ormiston, was married,
(24:57):
so this would definitely have been scandalous. Eventually, he admitted
that he was cheating on his wife, although he was
adamant that the mistress was not McPherson. Police dusted a
cottage in Carmel where Ormison and a woman had been spotted,
but none of the prince matched Amy's and there was
even a case assembled to press charges against McPherson for
(25:21):
conspiracy and obstruction of justice. So there was a trial
that was arranged for January of nineteen twenty seven, but
the charges were dropped before then as the Los Angeles
District Attorney named Asa Keys started to realize that many
of the witness accounts that he had built his case
upon were really not credible. And then, as another side
(25:42):
story that sometimes comes up when you're looking at this,
he had his own sort of legal problems bubbling up.
But so basically the whole thing fell apart. No arrests
were ever made in the kidnapping, which remains unsolved, and
no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Amy McPherson
has ever come to light. She wrote about the event
in her nineteen twenty seven book In Service of the King,
(26:05):
The Story of My Life, And once the furor of
the kidnapping and the alleged conspiracy had died down, Amy
could still be found at her ministry. She had in
fact been there all along, throughout all of these headlines
and investigations. Basically she went right back to work as
a minister and an evangelist and a faith healer when
she returned home from Arizona. One of the things she
(26:28):
became famous for is her work feeding the needy. In
nineteen twenty seven, the Angelus Temple Commissary opened its doors,
and this facility is credited with feeding more than one
point five million people during the depression, even when it
was struggling financially itself. Amy's community outreach through the Commissary
was based, as her ministry on the principle that everyone
(26:50):
was welcome, regardless of their position in society, their religion,
or their color, and she also organized a lot of
other charitable work through the Commissary and also just through
her ministry. But despite all of the good work that
was going on in the name of the Angelus Temple,
Amy never really regained the popularity and the positive press
(27:12):
that she had enjoyed in the early nineteen twenties, and
she also found that she had some troubles at work
that had not been there before. At one point, her
mother quit due to arguments over the handling of the
Angelus Temple finances. The choir also walked out. While many
and many of the choir members returned, there was ongoing
(27:33):
tension and strife. Some of it centering on how Amy's
style had shifted to more modern and fashionable attire rather
than the old style of dress that many felt her
position really demanded. Many who really was indispensable to the
Four Square Church resigned a second time in nineteen thirty
and just a month later, Amy had a nervous breakdown.
(27:56):
After the breakdown, she took a cruise to tour Asia with
her daughter. They stopped in Honolulu and they went to
Hong Kong to visit Robert's grave before eventually heading to India,
where McPherson was planning on quote studying the women's movement
in connection with the campaign for independence. In nineteen thirty one,
McPherson married a third time to an actor in one
(28:17):
of the Angela's Temple's plays. His name was David L. Hutton.
He was nine years younger than she was, and he
came with all kinds of baggage, including a woman seeking
legal action against him for breach of promise, claiming that
he had promised a betrothal to her before marrying McPherson.
Hearing this news was such a shock to the minister
that she passed out, hitting her head and fracturing her skull,
(28:42):
and after she recovered from this injury, or was at
least partially recovered, it was suggested that Amy go on
a holiday, so she took a recuperative cruise to Europe,
accompanied only by a nurse. While she was traveling, Hutton,
much to the chagrin of the church administration, began using
his status Amy's husband to promote himself in theatrical endeavors
(29:04):
outside the church. He also had a reputation as a womanizer,
and the whole union was viewed with just disease by
the church, in part because it was frowned upon for
a divorce person to remarry so long as their former
spouse was alive. Harold McPherson was still alive, although he
had remarried. In all likelihood, if Hutton had been better liked,
(29:26):
this probably would not have been that big of an issue. Yeah,
People just kind of saw him as a little bit
of a con man. He was a vaudevillian, and you know,
I think there was a general distrust of his sort
of theatrical background and that he was just playing her.
And on July eighteenth of nineteen thirty three, the Chicago
(29:47):
Tribune ran a story entitled quote Hutton sues to divorce
Amy for baby hoax. Hutton had filed for divorce while
McPherson was still out of the country, claiming that he
had been the victim of ongoing mental cruelty in the marriage.
He said that Amy had told friends before she left
for Europe that she was planning to divorce him when
she returned, and that she tortured him by pretending to
(30:07):
have given birth to their child while in Paris, when
in fact she had undergone an abdominal surgery. And if
you remember earlier in this episode, we talked about the
fact that she had a hysterectomy years before this, So
it's all kind of it takes on a very sort
of soap opera e crazy, he said, she said, drama turn.
At this point, Hutton was also plotting to sell emotion
(30:32):
picture story that revolved around a female evangelist, but once
the marriage was behind her, macpherson seemed to dismiss this
as a huge mistake. Yeah, I think she started to
see him the same way everyone else did, as someone
who was just trying to take advantage of her name
and make a few bucks off of it. And while
Amy's work carried on. You know, she continued to minister.
(30:56):
Media interest in her ministry really had been eclipsed by
interest in the more sensational and sometimes CD and theoretical
aspects of her life, like the ones that people were
just sort of guessing it. Amy died in Oakland, California,
in nineteen forty four at the age of fifty four
(31:17):
a kidney ailment that had some complications combined with the
ingestion of sikinol, which was sleeping pills, and she wound
up dying due to an accidental overdose.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
With McPherson's death, the ministry passed to her son, Rolf,
who served as president of the Four Square Church until
nineteen eighty eight, at which point he retired, and the
Four Square Church remains today. It has more than nine
million members. It's still very popular, and it was all
started by this one woman who had a vision and
felt she had a calling. And it's kind of fascinating
(31:48):
to me to see how this sort of grew and
kind of juxtaposed against sort of modern evangelism. It's very interesting.
She was really groundbreaking in a number of ways. Thanks
so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this
episode is out of the archive. If you heard an
(32:10):
email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over
the course of the show, that could be obsolete now.
Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
You can find us all over social media at missed Dhistory,
and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts,
Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen
(32:32):
to podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Happy Saturday. Evangelist Amy Simple McPherson disappeared while out for
a swim on May eighteenth, nineteen twenty six, so ninety
eight years ago today if you're listening on the day
this episode came out, So for today, we have our
episode on her and her disappearance as Today's Saturday Classic.
(00:22):
This originally came out on November nineteenth, twenty fourteen. Enjoy
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hello One, Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Wilson, and we're going to talk about an evangelist today,
an evangelist who broke all kinds of barriers and rose
to incredible popularities in the nineteen twenties and then vanished.
And there are still mysteries surrounding that disappearance, but they
might not be the mysteries you would expect. Just in
the interest of expectations management, we're not really going to
(01:03):
dig particularly deep into this evangelist's religion and doctrines. We'll
talk about it as it relates to the events of
her life and sort of how she became famous and
then had this sort of huge public turning point. But
in the interest of time and sticking to history rather
than theology, we're not going to break down her views
in relation to other Christian views. And there were certainly
(01:24):
some debates and disagreements within the church about sort of
how she handled things versus how other sects handled things,
and we're not really digging into that. She's also a
person whose life is extremely well documented. So if you
have heard of this person and you may know her story,
you may be like, hey, they didn't mention X, Y
or Z. That's because this podcast runs very long already,
(01:46):
and we're kind of just trying to cover what sort
of led, as I said, to her fame and sort
of how that built up and then how her life
shifted pretty suddenly. So if we've left anything out, it's
really for the interest of time and kind of trying
to keep the story on track, because there are many,
many different things we could talk about in relation to her.
(02:07):
But the person we're talking about, in case you were
wondering or maybe even guest, is Amy Simple McPherson, and
she was absolutely a really extraordinary figure in early twentieth
century religious landscape. She preached both in the US and abroad,
and at a time when most women were expected to
stick to the roles of wife and mother, Amy dedicated
(02:28):
herself above all to her ministry and opened the door
for other women to be religious leaders on that sort
of huge scale public level. So first we will talk
about sort of her origins.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Amy Elizabeth Kennedy was born on October ninth, eighteen ninety
in Ontario, Canada. Her parents were James Morgan Kennedy and
Mildred Pierce Kennedy, and they were very religious. James was
the organist and choir director of their Methodist church, and Many,
as her mother was called, had been raised by Salvationists
(03:01):
after being orphaned as a child, and Amy was a
little bit rebellious by nature. Early on in her life,
she kind of went through a phase where she eschewed
her parents' religion. Dad appears to have been brief.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And kind of just one of those developmental phases where
like young adults sort of test their parents in their boundaries,
because later she rebelled even more vehemently against the teaching
of evolution in her school. She really spoke out against
the theory of evolution a lot throughout her life. That's
another thing that we're not going to go into depth in,
but if you wanted to research that, there's certainly a
(03:36):
wealth of information about it. By the time she graduated
high school, though, Amy was very devoted to her faith.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
When Amy was just seventeen, she got married for the
first time. Her groom, Robert Semple, was an Irish Pentecostal
missionary that she'd met at a revival that had been
really pivotal in cementing her commitment to her religion. He
was ten years older than she was, and the two
of them got married on August twelfth, nineteen oh eight,
and the Kennedy's Apple Orchard. Robert's missionary work took them
(04:06):
to Stratsford, Ontario, and then London, Ontario, and eventually Chicago,
Illinois in early nineteen oh nine, and there they were
both ordained as ministers. They started touring the United States
and Canada on evangelical tours, and back when Robert and
Amy were still courting, they had actually hatched this dream
together of serving as missionaries in China, and after their
(04:30):
were datement and their early faith tours in North America,
they really felt like they were ready and it was
time to make their move. Into international ministry, so in
nineteen ten, they left Chicago. In her autobiography The Story
of My Life, Amy described the final exchange in their
decision to leave for Asia as her husband putting his
(04:50):
arm around her and saying, Darling, I feel the time
has come for us to leave for China, and her
reply was I am ready, Robert, anywhere in the world
with you.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
And the Simples did not go directly to China. They
first went to Belfast, Ireland to visit Robert's home and
his family, and from there they traveled to London. They
also traveled to the Suez Canal before eventually making their
way to Asia, and they arrived in Hong Kong in
June of nineteen ten, and at this point Amy was pregnant.
She was very pregnant. She was into her third trimester.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Just a few weeks after they got to Hong Kong,
both Amy and Robert got sick, and they had both
contracted malaria. While Amy recovered, Robert eventually died from his
illness on August nineteenth, nineteen ten. So young missus Semple
found herself pregnant and penniless in a foreign country and
(05:46):
a widow at the age of nineteen, and because at
this point she was so late in her pregnancy and
she was still in a week in state from her
own bout of malaria. She had not recovered fully, but
she was close to recovery. Amy had to stay in
Hong Kong even after Robert had died, and so she
gave birth to her daughter, ROBERTA. Starr, just a month later,
(06:08):
still in Hong Kong, on September seventeenth. And although Robert
was gone, he continued to be a really significant influence
in her life. Yeah, there have been some discussions if
you read in various autobiographical accounts of hers and also
biographies written by others, that kind of hinted the fact
that because Robert died when they were still very early
(06:31):
in their marriage and she was very young, and he
became a little bit idealized in her head and kind
of became this model of perfection. And there have been
some debates among historians about if Robert had lived, would
she have still held him in the same high esteem
for the rest of her life, or would they have
settled into a more mundane sort of equals relationship instead
(06:53):
of sort of the hero worship that she carried with her,
but not long after the arrival of her daughter. About
a month after Roberta was born, Amy made her way
back to the United States, and this time she settled
in New York City and her mother joined her there,
both to help the new mother out and because Many
had an interest in working with the Salvation Army, Amy
(07:15):
also did the same thing, and they both worked to
collect money, like they would go into movie theaters and
collect money, and they also served food and the rescue
mission there. It wasn't long before she met an accountant
named Harold Stewart McPherson in the city, and the two
of them became friends and then gradually started courting. Many
wasn't really enthusiastic about the relationship. She was concerned that
(07:39):
Amy's involvement with Harold would lead her away from her
religious calling. Yeah, all of their work with the Salvation
Army had really cemented, certainly for Minni and to Amy
as well, that you know, ministry of one form or
another was going to be her her life's work. And
even though Minni did not oppose Harold as a person,
(08:00):
since she didn't find anything wrong with him, she was
just worried that, like falling in love again was going
to kind of derail the vision that Amy had for
her life, and in fact that kind of came true
for a bit. In nineteen eleven, Amy moved with her
daughter Roberta, to Chicago, where she married Harold on October
(08:20):
twenty fourth of that year, and less than a year
into their marriage, the McPherson's moved to Providence, Rhode Island,
and on March twenty third of nineteen thirteen, the couple
welcomed their son, Ral Potter McPherson. He eventually his middle
name changed from Potter, which had been I believe the
doctor who delivered him, to Kennedy, which had been her
maiden name, and away from Potter. Amy had been involved
(08:44):
with their church in Chicago, but her religious fervor really
intensified after Roth was born. She made a go of
a life as a housewife and Providence for several years,
but to be really blunted, she was unhappy. Harold had
hoped that she would find fulfillment in motherhood and life
as his wife, but it just didn't work out that way.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
And at one point. One thing that comes up repeatedly
throughout any biography of hers is that she sort of
had like a long series of just odd health struggles.
And at one point during this time, Amy became very
very ill. She required a hysterectomy, she had to have
surgery for an appendicitis. Her condition was very grave. They
(09:25):
had called her mother to the hospital because they thought
she was going to die, so Harold had made sure
the family note was going on. And during this time,
when she was you know, lingering near death, Amy describes
being called to by a voice, which she believed to
be God, saying now will you go, and she felt
that she would answer with yes, she would indeed go.
(09:48):
She knew it would either be to the afterlife or
to ministry, and at that point she just gave herself
over to whatever was going to happen. And she immediately,
she said, felt the pain leave her body. And after that,
over the course of the next several weeks, she made
a full and rather rapping into some description's almost miraculous recovery.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Her health turnaround convinced Amy that the only path for
her was full time ministry. She packed up the kids
and left Harold while he was out one night in
June of nineteen fifteen. First she went to her parents'
farm in Canada, where she dropped off the children, and
then she sent Harold a telegram that read, I have
tried to walk your way and have failed. Won't you
(10:29):
come now and walk my way. I'm sure we will
be happy. Amy had basically chosen the ministry over Harold,
and in turn, Harold, when he received this note, decided
he would choose Amy over life. In Rhode Island, he
followed her, and he joined her in her ministry, traveling
from tent revival to tent revival, and he would travel
(10:51):
ahead of her to the new sites and make sure
that they had all the required permits to have these revivals,
and that you know, tents were set up and all
the needs are arranged, so that her ministry could just
run smoothly and she could focus on the religion and
her message and not have to worry about all the sundry,
mundane sort of nuts and bolts of setting up these events.
(11:12):
After the first two years of traveling revival ministry, Amy
also started up a magazine called The Bridal Call to
spread her messages and her teachings through the written word,
so much as a modern day personality might try to
expand their reach using social media to engage with an audience.
Amy's magazine drew her new followers.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yeah, it was very popular. And while she felt that
she was following her calling and doing all of this,
Harold really always felt like he was just following Amy.
He continued to hope that she would somehow find happiness
in their family and fulfillment in their marriage, but his
hopes never manifested. You know, he sort of recognized that
(11:53):
he was just kind of a secondary part of her life.
And Amy remained devoted to her ministry, agree to her
deceased first husband who had really sparked this passion for
evangelical preaching in her, and those elements combined with this
life on the road, which was really rudimentary. You read
about them kind of washing their clothes and streams and
(12:16):
sleeping outside at night and having to deal with, you know,
bugs out in camping situations and just you know, it
was not a life of luxury by any means, and
it really started to take a toll on their marriage.
So Harold eventually returned to Providence and they were divorced
late in the summer of nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
From nineteen nineteen on, Amy's ministry really took off, and
her approach had always been really entered denominational, but she
wound up being credentialed by a number of churches as
though she was actually affiliated with their official ministries, even
though she had never sought out those credentials. She was
very well liked and gained a devoted following, so a
lot of churches just wanted to have her associated with
(12:56):
them in some way, And in addition into being welcoming
to all people, her revivals and sermons were different from
a lot of what had come before in that they
were very positive in tone. She focused on the loving,
accepting image of Jesus rather than preaching as many ministers
did at the time, and had for many years of
sort of the more vengeful fire and brimstone vision of God.
(13:19):
And faith healing was also an important part of her ministry,
and her sort of uplifting spirituality and her passionate but
upbeat and cheerful approach to the whole thing was incredibly
appealing in post World War One America. It was different
and it was fresh, and people were really drawn to it.
On top of her traveling ministry and her magazine, Amy
also started publishing books in the late nineteen teens. She
(13:42):
was a prolific writer and produced numerous volumes about herself
and her teachings over the years, including This Is That
and Divine Healing Sermons.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
In nineteen twenty one, Amy decided that it was really
time to find a permanent home for her ministry, and
she bought land near the Echo Park neighborhood in Los Angeles, California,
to begin fulfilling a mission that she believed God had
given her, which was building the Angelus Temple there. And
this was a time when Los Angeles was growing at
a really incredible rate, so Amy was sort of smart
(14:14):
slash fortunate one or the other or both to secure
the land for the temple. When she did, she kind
of got in just as the real estate market was
really about to explode. To raise funds for the construction,
she spent the next two years on a rigorous tour,
first driving back and forth throughout the United States, traveling
as was usual, with her mother and children in the car.
(14:36):
Then she expanded her ministry and the financing of the
temple with a tour of Australia. And it was while
she was touring the US in nineteen twenty two, so
during this sort of fundraising tour that Amy, while she
was giving a sermon in Oakland, California, was inspired to
envision what would eventually become the Four Square Church, which
(14:59):
she found, and this was based on the four identities
of Jesus that she was preaching about as a savior,
as a healer, as a baptizer in the Holy Spirit,
and as the coming King. Finally, on New Year's Day
of nineteen twenty three, the Angelus Temple was dedicated. It
could seat five three hundred people, and the Four Square
(15:20):
Church was founded there, although it took several years for
that to be formally incorporated, and later in nineteen twenty three,
she also founded the Lighthouse for International Four Square Evangelism
Bible College so that she could educate others to be evangelists.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
In nineteen twenty four, she gave a sermon on the
radio for the first time at Los Angeles station KFSG.
Later she'd become the first woman to be issued a
license to operate a radio station. And yeah, she was
really reaching out into new markets. She often talked about
as something of a contradiction because in many ways she
(15:59):
was preaching really like you know, old school values, but
with a very sort of modern approach to how she
was spreading this word, and so like the magazines and
the books and the radio appearances, it was all sort
of Some people found it hard to reconcile her traditionalist
values and her modern approach to spreading them. But basically,
(16:20):
her popularity was soaring, and just as it reached a
fever pitch, she was one of the most famous people
in the United States, and indeed she had a pretty
big global following, she vanished. And before we talk about
what happened and sort of how that all played out,
do you like to take a word from a sponsor.
I would.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
By the mid nineteen twenty she was preaching up to
twenty sermons a week, and her writing was regularly published.
She was overseeing the training of her ministerial proteges, and
she was sort of running the business of the church,
and she was, as we said before the ad break,
just incredibly popular.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
On May eighteenth, nineteen twenty six, Amy, who was working
on a sermon, went to the beach at the urging
of her mother to take a much needed break from working.
She went with her secretary, Emma Schaeffer, so that she
could keep working on her sermon. In reviewer notes, Amy
decided she needed a break and she went into the
water for a swim.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
And she did not return from that swim. At the
services that were scheduled that evening for Amy to prechat,
she did not appear, and instead her mother, Minnie, gave
the sermon in her place. And at the end of
the service, many quietly announced what had already been rumored
throughout the city all afternoon, and it was now appearing
in the local evening papers. Sister, as Amy was called
(17:46):
in her ministry, had gone to the beach at Ocean
Park and had vanished while swimming. Sister is gone, Many
announced to the congregation, we know she is with Jesus.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
The next day, a full tilt investigation went into year.
There were dozens of reporters and hundreds of onlookers that
appeared on the beach to see what was happening. As
the investigation got underway.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
The Coast Guard had boats traversing the coastline. They were
looking for something, anything that might offer a clue as
to what had happened to this beloved evangelist. Teams of
divers scoured the waters in search of a body or
of clues, and one diver actually lost his life in
the search effort. There was also another fatality when a
(18:30):
young woman who had been a member of the Church
of the Four Square Gospel, who was just grief stricken
at the loss of their spiritual leader, actually drowned herself.
On Memorial Day, which was twelve days after the disappearance,
the Angelus Temple was packed. More than twenty five thousand
people showed up at the beach where Amy had vanished
to grieve and set out remembrances. Police were concerned at
(18:54):
what might happen if her body were to be found
that day, so they worked on action plans for handling
that kind of grim discovery. It did not happen, but
they were definitely like ready to kind of address potential
crowd control issues, and eventually, you know, this was now
a couple weeks in church members finally accepted that Amy
must have died, and in effort to recover the body,
(19:16):
they actually the church actually paid to have the bay
dynamited in the hopes that the body would surface somehow,
but it did not.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Some members of the church believed that she would be resurrected,
and so they prayed and waited for her to return,
and Minnie her mother arranged a memorial service at the temple,
and that was scheduled for June twentieth, and more than
seventeen thousand people showed up, far too many than they
could fit in the building. While all of that morning
(19:44):
was going on, there had been a whole other school
of thought about what had happened to Amy. Rumors began
to circulate that Amy had probably not died, but had
instead purposely removed herself from the public eye for some
possibly nefarious person reason. There were whispers of plastic surgery,
talk of affairs, a pregnancy that she might intend to abort,
(20:07):
and all of these rumors made their way around California
and eventually the country. Really a detective claimed to have
spotted her at a train station, and more sightings started
to crop up after that. This will no doubt sound
familiar if you've listened to our Judge Creater episode or
any other missing person story. Almost every day throughout the
(20:28):
United States, papers ran stories of the latest Amy sightings.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
There were also two ransom letters that came about. The
first one that Minnie Kennedy Amy's mother received, made it
clear that police should not be involved and that she
should turn over fifty thousand dollars if she wanted to
see her daughter again. The second letter, which came a
bit later, said that Amy was going to be sold
into slavery if a ransom of half a million dollars
wasn't paid, but they really thought she was dead at
(20:55):
this point and that these might be hoaxes. Three days
after her mother memorial service, Amy Simple McPherson emerged from
the Mexican desert in Agua Priezza, Sonora, a small Mexican
town just south of the border from Douglas, Arizona. She
collapsed after telling a couple that she had escaped from
(21:16):
kidnappers and had been traveling on foot for hours. Amy
was of course rushed to the hospital and after that
a phone call was made to her mother, and authorities
working with her mother were able to confirm the evangelist's
identity based on information Many provided about a scar that
was on Amy's finger, and after Amy was able to
(21:36):
provide the name of her pet pigeon, which Mini wanted
for validation that it was the correct person. So at
this point the lost beloved administer was found.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
After she was able to recuperate, she gave an account
of what had happened to her. She said she'd been
lured by a couple to their car as she got
out of the water from swimming. They told her they
had a sick baby that they wanted her to pray over,
and when she leaned into the back seat to see
the child, which was not there, she was pushed down
into the floorboards and then drive it away.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
And according to her account, she had been held by
a woman named Rose, a man named Steve, and another man.
And she said that she had been drugged and tortured
and kept in a shack, and that she had eventually escaped.
She wriggled out of the ropes that she had been
tied with and ran through the desert and estimated twenty
miles before she reached Agua Prieta Douglas, Arizona, where Amy
(22:33):
was hospitalized, became the focus of national attention. Reporters and
followers poured into the town. The telegraph lines were overloaded
with well wishes, and her story was headline news. But
for some people the tide actually turned. Similar to how
there were people that didn't think her disappearance quite added up.
(22:55):
There were some people that thought her reappearance also had
some suspicious elements to it. The Coachee County sheriff was
suspicious of her story. He thought that the condition of
her clothing was far too tidy to have been through
what she claimed it happened. Additionally, police from both Douglas
and Agua Prieto were unable to find any traces of
(23:16):
the kidnappers or a shack in the area that she
had described. She even accompanied search teams into the desert,
but was unable to find the shack herself. McPherson had, however,
received multiple threats through the years as her fame grew,
so some people sort of held that up as you know,
evidence that this was entirely plausible. There had been people
(23:38):
threatening to do things to her, to kill her, and
even to kidnap her for a while. Just a year
prior to the disappearance, a plot to kidnap amy had
been discovered and foiled by the LAPD.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Before we talk about what happened after she got home,
let's have a brief word from a sponsor. As Amy
and her mother headed back to Los Angeles from Arizona,
the train that they were in was basically greeted all
along the way by well witchers, so whether they stopped
(24:13):
or not, sort of every town that they went through
there were people by the sides of the tracks kind
of waving, throwing flowers, et cetera. But even as they
got back to Los Angeles, the media circus around her
alleged kidnapping was really just beginning. Not only did papers
have new suspicious persons to mention on an almost daily
basis that they thought could be, you know, the possible
(24:35):
perpetrators of this kidnapping, but speculations about Amy's own possible
involvement in some sort of deception were also abundant. An
engineer at the radio station owned by Angelus Temple had
disappeared at the same time as Amy, which led some
people to speculate that the two of them had been
having an affair. The man in question, Kenneth Ormiston, was married,
(24:57):
so this would definitely have been scandalous. Eventually, he admitted
that he was cheating on his wife, although he was
adamant that the mistress was not McPherson. Police dusted a
cottage in Carmel where Ormison and a woman had been spotted,
but none of the prince matched Amy's and there was
even a case assembled to press charges against McPherson for
(25:21):
conspiracy and obstruction of justice. So there was a trial
that was arranged for January of nineteen twenty seven, but
the charges were dropped before then as the Los Angeles
District Attorney named Asa Keys started to realize that many
of the witness accounts that he had built his case
upon were really not credible. And then, as another side
(25:42):
story that sometimes comes up when you're looking at this,
he had his own sort of legal problems bubbling up.
But so basically the whole thing fell apart. No arrests
were ever made in the kidnapping, which remains unsolved, and
no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Amy McPherson
has ever come to light. She wrote about the event
in her nineteen twenty seven book In Service of the King,
(26:05):
The Story of My Life, And once the furor of
the kidnapping and the alleged conspiracy had died down, Amy
could still be found at her ministry. She had in
fact been there all along, throughout all of these headlines
and investigations. Basically she went right back to work as
a minister and an evangelist and a faith healer when
she returned home from Arizona. One of the things she
(26:28):
became famous for is her work feeding the needy. In
nineteen twenty seven, the Angelus Temple Commissary opened its doors,
and this facility is credited with feeding more than one
point five million people during the depression, even when it
was struggling financially itself. Amy's community outreach through the Commissary
was based, as her ministry on the principle that everyone
(26:50):
was welcome, regardless of their position in society, their religion,
or their color, and she also organized a lot of
other charitable work through the Commissary and also just through
her ministry. But despite all of the good work that
was going on in the name of the Angelus Temple,
Amy never really regained the popularity and the positive press
(27:12):
that she had enjoyed in the early nineteen twenties, and
she also found that she had some troubles at work
that had not been there before. At one point, her
mother quit due to arguments over the handling of the
Angelus Temple finances. The choir also walked out. While many
and many of the choir members returned, there was ongoing
(27:33):
tension and strife. Some of it centering on how Amy's
style had shifted to more modern and fashionable attire rather
than the old style of dress that many felt her
position really demanded. Many who really was indispensable to the
Four Square Church resigned a second time in nineteen thirty
and just a month later, Amy had a nervous breakdown.
(27:56):
After the breakdown, she took a cruise to tour Asia with
her daughter. They stopped in Honolulu and they went to
Hong Kong to visit Robert's grave before eventually heading to India,
where McPherson was planning on quote studying the women's movement
in connection with the campaign for independence. In nineteen thirty one,
McPherson married a third time to an actor in one
(28:17):
of the Angela's Temple's plays. His name was David L. Hutton.
He was nine years younger than she was, and he
came with all kinds of baggage, including a woman seeking
legal action against him for breach of promise, claiming that
he had promised a betrothal to her before marrying McPherson.
Hearing this news was such a shock to the minister
that she passed out, hitting her head and fracturing her skull,
(28:42):
and after she recovered from this injury, or was at
least partially recovered, it was suggested that Amy go on
a holiday, so she took a recuperative cruise to Europe,
accompanied only by a nurse. While she was traveling, Hutton,
much to the chagrin of the church administration, began using
his status Amy's husband to promote himself in theatrical endeavors
(29:04):
outside the church. He also had a reputation as a womanizer,
and the whole union was viewed with just disease by
the church, in part because it was frowned upon for
a divorce person to remarry so long as their former
spouse was alive. Harold McPherson was still alive, although he
had remarried. In all likelihood, if Hutton had been better liked,
(29:26):
this probably would not have been that big of an issue. Yeah,
People just kind of saw him as a little bit
of a con man. He was a vaudevillian, and you know,
I think there was a general distrust of his sort
of theatrical background and that he was just playing her.
And on July eighteenth of nineteen thirty three, the Chicago
(29:47):
Tribune ran a story entitled quote Hutton sues to divorce
Amy for baby hoax. Hutton had filed for divorce while
McPherson was still out of the country, claiming that he
had been the victim of ongoing mental cruelty in the marriage.
He said that Amy had told friends before she left
for Europe that she was planning to divorce him when
she returned, and that she tortured him by pretending to
(30:07):
have given birth to their child while in Paris, when
in fact she had undergone an abdominal surgery. And if
you remember earlier in this episode, we talked about the
fact that she had a hysterectomy years before this, So
it's all kind of it takes on a very sort
of soap opera e crazy, he said, she said, drama turn.
At this point, Hutton was also plotting to sell emotion
(30:32):
picture story that revolved around a female evangelist, but once
the marriage was behind her, macpherson seemed to dismiss this
as a huge mistake. Yeah, I think she started to
see him the same way everyone else did, as someone
who was just trying to take advantage of her name
and make a few bucks off of it. And while
Amy's work carried on. You know, she continued to minister.
(30:56):
Media interest in her ministry really had been eclipsed by
interest in the more sensational and sometimes CD and theoretical
aspects of her life, like the ones that people were
just sort of guessing it. Amy died in Oakland, California,
in nineteen forty four at the age of fifty four
(31:17):
a kidney ailment that had some complications combined with the
ingestion of sikinol, which was sleeping pills, and she wound
up dying due to an accidental overdose.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
With McPherson's death, the ministry passed to her son, Rolf,
who served as president of the Four Square Church until
nineteen eighty eight, at which point he retired, and the
Four Square Church remains today. It has more than nine
million members. It's still very popular, and it was all
started by this one woman who had a vision and
felt she had a calling. And it's kind of fascinating
(31:48):
to me to see how this sort of grew and
kind of juxtaposed against sort of modern evangelism. It's very interesting.
She was really groundbreaking in a number of ways. Thanks
so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this
episode is out of the archive. If you heard an
(32:10):
email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over
the course of the show, that could be obsolete now.
Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
You can find us all over social media at missed Dhistory,
and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts,
Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen
(32:32):
to podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is a
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