New Haven County Court Records

“[T]hat he had surrendered his reason to her control”: The intriguing case of Amos Hunt and the Wakemanites

We are pleased to present a second guest post from our Uncovering New Haven project student volunteer, Max Spicer. He will discuss an interesting and unusual case he discovered in the New Haven County Superior Court Judgments (Civil Case Files).

Please be advised that this post discusses sensitive topics that some might find upsetting, triggering, or offensive. These subjects include, but are not limited to, cults, extortion, and murder.

"The Prophetess,” Mrs. Rhoda Wakeman. (Drawn from life.) Sketch courtesy of Murder by Gaslight blog.

The 19th century was a time of incredible social growth. From the Victorian era to the Gilded Age and Industrial Revolution, beliefs and practices changed dramatically in the United States. Evolving religious movements had a profound impact across the country, with some sprouting into groups of religious extremists—falling into a category that we would now describe as cults. Cults were not too unfamiliar in the Northeast by this time, the most notable being the Oneida Community in rural New York which spread across New England before turning into a joint-stock company and becoming one of the largest silverware manufacturers in the world. The Wakemanites, founded a few years after the Oneida Community, were much shorter lived but left a tragic impression in the history of New Haven.

One former member of this cult, Amos Hunt, took several of the Wakeman family members to court in April 1855. To preface his case, Hunt gave a description of the group and how it came to be:

That on the twenty sixth day of January, 1855, and for a long period, to wit, the period of two years continuously, there existed in said town of New Haven a certain fraternity of persons, united together by a common faith in certain religious sentiments and doctrines; that the leader, teacher and most influential personage of said fraternity was Mrs. Rhoda Wakeman, of said New Haven, and that among the doctrines taught by said Rhoda, and accepted as true by her followers, are the following, to wit, that on a certain occasion the said Rhoda died and was then sent back to this world, from the place of departed spirits, by God, for the purpose of making important revelations to mankind, that she talks with Jesus Christ face to face; and that she will live upon earth until the final destruction of the world.

This description is supported by an article published in the New York Times on January 4, 1856. The journalist interviewed several members of the cult, including Samuel Sly, Rhoda’s brother and “high priest,” who gave an account of what their practices consisted of:

“WAKEMANITES” SERVICES.

Our Services were carried on regularly on the Sabbath, and always on one day during the week. We had other meetings as occasion demanded. Our services consisted in prayer and singing by the faithful believers, and then my sister would select quotations from the Bible, and explain them, and then the spirit of the Almighty would descend on her, and she would reveal to us the sayings of the Deity, and guide us in our temporal as well as spiritual doings.

Amos Hunt would say in court that he was once a follower of Rhoda, “that he had surrendered his reason to her control.” While he was under this belief system, Rhoda announced that Hunt’s wife had been “secretly plotting against the life of said Rhoda.” He was terrified by this, and it was under this spell of terror that William and David Wakeman, the sons of Rhoda, came to the house of Amos Hunt and told him that Rhoda had made the revelation that his wife had tried to kill her with poison, but in failing to kill her had left her with serious injuries. William and David offered to “discharge” Hunt for $500 (almost $18,500 today) to account for the injuries sustained. Hunt, believing that “supernatural agencies had wrought upon the mind of his wife,” agreed to give them the money, mostly in the form of stocks in the People’s Savings Bank of New Haven. It was soon after this transaction that Hunt seemed to regain his clarity, immediately seeking counsel and filing a lawsuit against the Wakemans.

Unfortunately, this was not the end. As revealed by the “high priest” of the Wakemanites in the New York Times, Amos Hunt was quickly labelled “the son of perdition” upon his leaving the cult and filing the suit. The article went on to say:

“The widow Wakeman [Rhoda] has declared that should he gain his suit, the world will irretrievably be destroyed and cast into the ‘outer darkness,’ while Samuel, somewhat less cautious, advises that he be deprived of his power of death so that the world may be redeemed. If Mr. Hunt has any great desire to continue his earthly existence, he will sue out writs de lunatico inquirendo against a number of the most prominent and bigoted of this sect.” When talking to Sam Sly, he added, “Amos Hunt proposed to pay the $500 spoken of to David Wakeman, the son of ‘the prophetess,’ and to pay it in the presence of Governor Dutton. This payment was made to the Governor, and then an evil influence fell upon us. It has been said that we frightened him into the payment. That is false. He knew of his guilt, or we would not have made any such payment. He must have been a very ignorant man to pay from fear, if he was innocent.”

Only shortly after Rhoda had declared Amos Hunt to be in cahoots with the devil, Justus Matthews, a farmer and member of the Wakemanites, loaned $200 to Samuel Sly. Compounding this financial burden was Matthews’ ties to Amos Hunt—Sly claimed that when he had found the arsenic-laced cakes, he had “recommended to Matthews, who had much influence over Hunt, to arrest him, but his sympathies prevented, and Amos escaped the legal effects of his crime.”

Under these circumstances, it was deemed by Rhoda that Hunt had passed his power of death to Matthews. Before Matthews could collect his loan, he was murdered by Sly and other Wakemanites, who were arrested and sent to the New Haven County Jail, allowing Sly to give these accounts to the New York Times. When questioned about Matthews, Sly said he “was not killed by any of us, he came to his end when he was fifty years of age, by the termination of his league with the Devil. I understood from the revelation given to my sister that his league with Satan was that he should live in health and comfort for fifty years.”

Luckily for Amos Hunt and all others involved, the Wakemanites fell apart after the murder of Justus Matthews. Whether it was influential figures like Samuel Sly being sentenced to prison or members seeing a murder and beginning to question the movement, Rhoda and her followers seemed to have gone their own ways in 1856. Hopefully, Amos Hunt’s case against the Wakeman brothers allowed him and his wife to move on to a more comfortable, less dangerous life.

Further Reading

Murder by Gaslight blog: The Wakemanite Murder

New York Times: THE WAKEMANITES.; THE WOODBRIDGE AND NEW-HAVEN MURDERS. Full Particulars of the Horrible Deers-Personal Interviews with the Convicted Parties. From Our Own Reporter. Interviews with the convinced Parties. HORRIBLE DETAILS. (Please note that full access to this article requires a subscription.)

Front page of the “New-York Daily Times” from Friday, January 4, 1856.

As noted in a previous post, the records for this case, as well as several of the cases previously profiled in this blog, are currently in the process of being digitized. They will eventually be available for public viewing at the Connecticut Digital Archive (CTDA).

This project is made possible through funding from the Historic Documents Preservation fund of the Office of the Public Records Administrator. We also recognize the past support of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).