Mary Hayes-Chynoweth (1825-1905) was a psychic leader, mystic, founder of the "True Life Church", and editor of a journal named "True Life". [1] She had two sons, Jaye O. Hayes and Everis A. Hayes. [2]
Mary Hayes-Chynoweth was born on October 2, 1825, in Holland, NY. Her father, Rev. Abraham Folsom, was a Free Will Baptist Faith minister. The family moved to Cuba when Mary was three. She first exhibited mystic powers at the age of five when her sister was severely burned. They later moved to Wisconsin. [3]
Hayes-Chynoweth was a school teacher in Waterloo, WI in 1853. In 1854 she married Anson Hayes, a farmer. [1] After his death she married Thomas Chynoweth, an attorney in San Jose. He died one year after they married. [3]
According to records, Mary Hayes-Chynoweth was able to see through bodies, allowing her to pinpoint their medical issues, take their ailments into her own body, and heal them using herbs, water treatments, optimism, faith, and dietary restrictions including abstaining from alcohol, coffee, tea, and tobacco. She was allegedly able to confer with patients who did not speak the same language, see patients en route to her, and foresee economic trends, allowing her to capitalize on downturns and upswings. While in Wisconsin, Hayes-Chynoweth treated US Senator William Vilas, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice William Lyon, and Wisconsin Historical Society Superintendent Lyman Draper. [1] Mary Hayes-Chynoweth believed the Divine Spirit had blessed her and worked miracles through her. [3]
In 1883 Hayes-Chynoweth predicted a boom in mining and encouraged her two sons to go into mining and dig in an area 40 miles from Ashland, WI. Their ventures yielded rich iron ore in the Gogebic Range. Hayes-Chynoweth and her family owned two mines in the area, the Germania Mine and the Ashland Mine, and built the town of Hurley, WI. [1]
In 1887 Hayes-Chynoweth moved her family to San Jose, California. They built a 64-room mansion and named the surrounding area Edenvale. When this mansion burnt down in 1899, she built a new larger Hayes Mansion which still stands today. [2] The Hayes family owned 700 acres, much of which was planted with fruit trees and general farming. [2] The land is now Edenvale Garden Park and is owned and operated by the city of San Jose. [2]
In 1903 she founded the True Life Church. [3]
The Winchester Mystery House is a mansion in San Jose, California, that was once the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of firearms magnate William Wirt Winchester. The house became a tourist attraction nine months after Winchester's death in 1922. The Victorian and Gothic-style mansion is renowned for its size and its architectural curiosities and for the numerous myths and legends surrounding the structure and its former owner.
Sylvia Celeste Browne was an American writer and self-proclaimed medium and psychic. She appeared regularly on television and radio, including on The Montel Williams Show and Larry King Live, and hosted an hour-long online radio show on Hay House Radio.
Ruth Shick Montgomery was a journalist with a long and distinguished career as a reporter, correspondent, and syndicated columnist in Washington, DC.
Psychic surgery is a pseudoscientific medical fraud in which practitioners create the illusion of performing surgery with their bare hands and use sleight of hand, fake blood, and animal parts to convince the patient that diseased lesions have been removed and that the incision has spontaneously healed.
Mary Hallock Foote (1847–1938) was an American author and illustrator. She is best known for her illustrated short stories and novels portraying life in the mining communities of the turn-of-the-century American West.
Ashland is the name of the plantation of the 19th-century Kentucky statesman Henry Clay, located in Lexington, Kentucky, in the central Bluegrass region of the state. The buildings were built by slaves who also grew and harvested hemp, farmed livestock, and cooked and cleaned for the Clays.
New Almaden, known in Spanish as Nueva Almadén, is a historic community and former mercury mine in the Capitancillos Hills of San Jose, California, located at the southwestern point of Almaden Valley in South San Jose. New Almaden is divided into two parts: the mines and much of their immediate surroundings, including historic ghost town settlements in the Capintancillas, which together form the Almaden Quicksilver County Park, and the largely residential historic district surrounding the Casa Grande.
Frontier Village was a 39-acre (16 ha) amusement park in San Jose, California, that operated from 1961 to September 1980. It was located at 4885 Monterey Road, at the intersection with Branham Lane. The site is now Edenvale Garden Park, next to Hayes Mansion, and was once part of the sprawling Hayes Family Estate.
Muriel Vanderbilt was an American socialite and a thoroughbred racehorse owner/breeder who was a member of the wealthy Vanderbilt family.
Rosemary Altea is a British author who describes herself as a medium and healer. She has appeared on various programs, including Larry King Live, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and featured in the series premiere of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! alongside mentalist Mark Edward. She has written six books and claims to have a "healing foundation".
The Hayes Mansion is a historic mansion estate in the Edenvale neighborhood of San Jose, California. The mansion currently operates as a hotel resort and is currently known as Hayes Mansion San Jose, Curio Collection by Hilton. The hotel has been a member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, since 2019.
Alison "Eilley" Oram Bowers was a Scottish American woman who was, in her time, one of the richest women in the United States, and owner of the Bowers Mansion, one of the largest houses in the western United States. A farmer's daughter, Bowers married as a teenager, and her husband converted to Mormonism before the couple immigrated to the United States. After briefly living in Nauvoo, Illinois, she became an early Nevada pioneer, farmer and miner, and was made a millionaire by the Comstock Lode mining boom. Married and divorced two times, she married a third time and became a mother of three children but outlived them all.
Everis Anson Hayes was an American lawyer and politician who served seven terms as a U.S. Representative from California from 1905 to 1919.
Regina de Jesús Betancourt Ramírez is a Colombian self-described mentalist, psychic, mystic, and faith healer who is better known to her followers as Regina 11. A now retired politician, she founded and led the Metapolitical Unitary Movement, a political party that carried her to be Councilwoman for the City Councils of Bogotá, Medellín, San Rafael, Une, Vetas, and California, as well as Deputy to the Departamental Assembly of Cundinamarca, and finally Senator of Colombia. In addition she ran as a candidate for President of Colombia in the Colombian presidential elections of 1986, 1990, and 1994.
Henry Dwight Barrows was an American teacher, businessman, farmer, goldminer, reporter, United States Marshal, Los Angeles County School Superintendent, manufacturer, writer, and a founder and president of the Historical Society of Southern California.
Geraldine Dorothy Cummins was an Irish spiritualist medium, novelist and playwright. She began her career as a creative writer, but increasingly concentrated on mediumship and "channelled" writings, mostly about the lives of Jesus and Saint Paul, though she also published on a range of other topics.
The Lovejoy and Merrill-Nowlan Houses are two large, adjacent houses built in the 1800s in the Courthouse Hill Historic District in Janesville, Wisconsin. The Lovejoy house is in a rather eclectic Queen Anne style; Merrill-Nowlan is Georgian Revival. They were separate single-family homes with independent histories until both were owned by the YWCA in the 1970s. In 1980, they were added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Clara Coltrin Tomlinson McAdow was an American women's suffragist and a mine owner in Montana.
Thomas Bell was a Scottish-American capitalist. He was an investor, banker, and co-founder of the Bank of California. He began his career with Barron, Forbes & Company as a clerk in Tepic, Mexico, he later became partner and then owner of the house, which was renamed to Thomas Bell & Company. He took on a partner, George Staacke in 1879. Bell was the director of the California Bank by 1875. He entered into a lucrative, yet boundary crossing and entwined, relationship with Mary Ellen Pleasant that may have complicated Bell's personal life, while it also helped manage family relationships. After his death the relationship with Pleasant resulted in a years-long lawsuit filed by his wife against Pleasant.
Edenvale Gardens Regional Park is a city park in San Jose, California, occupying 19.5 acres (7.9 ha) in the Edenvale neighborhood. The site originally was developed by Rudolph Ulrich as the 40-acre (16 ha) formal park adjoining Hayes Mansion starting from approximately 1887. In 1954, the mansion and property was sold; the site next was used for the Frontier Village amusement park between 1961 and 1980, and when that park closed, approximately half the land was redeveloped into housing, with the rest preserved as the present-day city park after San Jose purchased the remaining land in 1987.