The Allure of Immortality: An American Cult, a Florida Swamp, and a Renegade Prophet by Millner Lyn

Author:Millner, Lyn [Millner, Lyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Florida, retail, cults, occult, religion, nonfiction
ISBN: 9780813061238
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Published: 2015-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

Marie McCready was thirteen when she and her family moved to Chicago. They had been living in Freedom, Pennsylvania, very close to Economy, when Marie’s father, William, heard that Teed was lecturing in nearby Beaver Falls. In spite of controversy, Teed had continued developing a following around Pittsburgh.16

William McCready, serious, quiet, and deeply religious, took his entire family to the series of lectures. To Marie, they were tiresome, but she enjoyed the streetcar rides to and from the hall. She and her sister Lovelle entertained themselves by memorizing the advertisements posted inside the streetcars, reading them on the way to the lectures and rehearsing them, silently, while Teed spoke. Many years later, when Marie was in her eighties, she wrote a memoir about her family’s experiences in the Unity, and she could still recall the verses for Heinz baked beans and Sapolio soap.

About her father, Marie wrote, “There are souls who are always reaching out, seeking something more ideal than life as a rule seems to offer, even though their own lives might seem . . . to approach as ideal an existence as mortals should expect. Father was one of these.” He had investigated many different creeds, she wrote, but none had completely satisfied him until then.17

When Teed wrapped up his stint in Beaver Falls, William McCready arranged for him to speak in their town, and he took care of everything, reserving the hall, printing the posters to advertise, and inviting Teed to stay at their house. Marie remembered that her parents sat up with him and talked late into the evening and soon after made plans to move the family to Chicago. It’s not clear what McCready saw in Teed, but Teed saw a man running a successful printing business in a small town, no easy feat. He was good at selling ads, Marie wrote. William had also managed a post office, he had been a telegraph operator, and, in his spare time, he liked to weave rugs. In Chicago, Teed would put him to work selling ads for the Flaming Sword and proofreading copy. William also liked the outdoors, a promising trait for the life of a Florida settler. Abigail McCready did not want to move to Chicago—she even suggested to William that he go without her—but her desire to keep the family together won out.

The expansion of Beth-Ophrah was not complete when the McCreadys arrived in Chicago, so Marie and her sisters were sent to live in Englewood with the other children and the workers at the printing plant, and her parents lived at Beth-Ophrah. This didn’t last long, because Marie’s mother protested. She insisted that her daughters live at Beth-Ophrah with her, and Teed accommodated her, though the matron and assistant matron at the mansion were not happy about it. In her memoir, Marie recorded an exchange her mother had related to her. Two women in the living room at Beth-Ophrah were talking about the McCreadys when one said to the other, “I don’t know what Doctor was thinking about, bringing in that sickly woman and all those children.

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