Foreseeing the Future: Evangeline Adams and Astrology in America: An Evangeline Adams Mystery

By Karen Christino

Once the world's most famous astrologer, Evangeline Adams popularized astrology in the U. S.  Foreseeing the Future chronicles Adams' life and forecasts, and also illuminates the history of astrology and the occult in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Karen Christino's one-of-a-kind biography tells the astounding tale of a woman who defied convention and made a lasting impression on American culture.  Adams wrote four books and had a top-rated radio show in the early 1930s.  She battled legal authorities in New York City for the right to practice astrology, married a man over 20 years her junior, founded a tremendous business enterprise and made stunning predictions.  J.P. Morgan, Tallulah Bankhead and Joseph Campbell were just a few of her renowned clients.  This book will fascinate anyone interested in cultural history, women's studies or astrology—skeptic and believer, expert and novice alike.

"Everyone in astrology will adore this book, written grippingly and beautifully by Karen Christino… One can not put it down, nor ever forget it!"  — Noel Tyl

"A must read for anyone interested in the history of astrology in the U.S." — Robert Zoller

"Whether Adams was indeed a great astrologer or simply an opportunistic charlatan is a judgment best left to the reader, who will undoubtedly be absorbed by Ms. Christino's affectionate yet balanced account.  — Judi Vitale, The Mountain Astrologer

"… a major contribution to the history of astrology.  If you want to know the truth, both factual and astrological, behind the legend of Evangeline Adams, read this book."  — Ken Irving, American Astrology Magazine

Karen Christino was a consulting astrologer in New York City for over 20 years.  Her books include three on Evangeline Adams (a biography, astro-biography and a mystery novel) and editing the work of Al H. Morrison.  She has also written about wedding astrology and declinations, and wrote horoscope columns for Glamour, Cosmopolitan and Modern Bride magazines, among many others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Karen Christino
• Release date: Jan 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781540194176

Karen Christino

Karen Christino is a consulting astrologer with more than fifteen years of experience. She has been the astrologer for Modern Bride and Your Prom magazines for seven years. She currently writes the “Stylescopes” column for Life & Style Weekly magazine. Christino has also written horoscope columns for Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Twist, and American Cheerleader magazines as well as features and forecasts for Marie Claire, For the Bride, Seventeen, and Teen People. She wrote the “Choose Your Career” advice column for American Astrology magazine for more than ten years and her work has been featured in numerous astrology journals. She holds a BA from Colgate University, has received top professional accreditation from the National Council for Geocosmic Research, and is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Book preview

Introduction

The astrologer Evangeline Adams was one of the most popular personalities in the United States in 1931. Thousands of listeners gathered near the radio three nights a week to listen to her soft Yankee twang and hear about her celebrity clients and her feats of prognostication. More importantly, they wanted to get a glimpse of the future. Evangeline’s sponsors reported receiving over 4,000 letters a day requesting horoscopes, and she employed more than 25 assistants in her New York City offices. She had already written several astrology books, but had established herself through personal consultations, charging $50 per half hour (a sum that would purchase a full dining room set at the time).

Evangeline Adams popularized astrology in America, bringing it to the middle classes and beyond. Before she began practicing in Boston in 1896, astrology enjoyed a limited vogue among homeopaths, esoteric philosophers and disreputable fortune-tellers. Through her untiring efforts, intelligence and social status (she was related to the presidential Adamses), Evangeline raised the public’s perception of astrology. She turned her several arrests for fortune-telling to her favor and garnered great publicity. In 1914, a New York City magistrate declared for the record that she raised astrology to the dignity of an exact science.

In coordinating her book releases, radio show and personal appearances, Adams was as savvy as any multi-media star today, creating a striking public persona that made her legendary. Many have eagerly repeated the myths and stories about Adams with numerous distortions and exaggerations.

Attempting to separate fact from fiction, I became intrigued with Evangeline's story. Though not all of my questions have been answered, it has been an engrossing journey, the likes of which I don’t expect to find again. If readers experience some of my own fascination with Evangeline and her stellar life, I will be delighted.

In this updated version of Foreseeing the Future, I’ve filled in some details, found additional newspaper coverage and added or corrected personal information from online genealogy sources. Evangeline’s story remains very much the same.

Karen Christino

Brooklyn, New York

January 2019

Chapter One:  New York, 1899

Fifth Avenue and 45th St. looking north, 1899

NY Public Library Picture Collection

In March of 1899, Evangeline Adams was one of the few women in the world making a living reading horoscopes. Single and ambitious, at 31, Evangeline had come to New York to make her fortune. She was relieved to leave the Boston area, her family’s home for generations. Her relatives were not sorry to see her go: she had not only broken an engagement to a wealthy merchant and struck out on her own in business, but had pursued, they thought, a bizarre way of life. Evangeline’s mother, once one of her closest confidantes, had passed away a few years earlier. And in the last few months, her close friend and astrology teacher, Dr. Smith, had also died. It was time to move on.

Astrologically, Evangeline believed it was a good time for the long journey from Boston to New York. Planetary conditions promised surprises and opportunities. So she had packed her bags to travel to New York at just this time, and had optimistically installed herself in Fifth Avenue’s luxurious Windsor Hotel.

By the afternoon of March 17, Miss Adams was well aware of how lucky she had actually been. A fire had completely destroyed the magnificent Windsor Hotel and she had escaped unharmed. This was to be Evangeline’s first big success in New York: she claimed to have forecast the disaster the previous day.

As the last century turned, New York City was expanding: bursting beyond the natural boundaries of its islands. With the consolidation of the five Boroughs in 1898, New York became the country’s largest and most powerful city, with a population of nearly three and a half million. Evangeline Adams wasn’t satisfied with the significantly smaller city of Boston; she wanted to do more, to spread out, to be at the center of things, and New York offered everything she needed.

Steel-ribbed skyscrapers already stood out against the landscape, and the new Park Row building rose to an astounding height of 30 stories. The king-sized Waldorf-Astoria hotel monopolized an entire city block on Fifth Avenue. Streets were crowded with horse cars and electric trolleys, and elevated trains thundered overhead. Automobiles were still considered a luxury for the rich, and most people doubted that cars would equal the popularity of bicycles. Garish electric lights continued to replace gaslights on city streets.

Legitimate theaters moved uptown past 42nd Street, their old Union square neighborhood turned over to the new motion picture industry. The lovely and elegant Lillian Russell was the city’s most popular performer, drawing crowds to Weber & Fields’ music hall and earning a phenomenal salary of $1,250 a week.

Nests of telephone and telegraph wires were generally tucked out of view underground, and plans were underway for the first subway. Teddy Roosevelt was elected governor after a triumphant return from Cuba as head of the Rough Riders. Men wore huge mustaches, derbies in winter, straw hats in summer and a mandatory jacket and vest.

Yet for all of its exuberant success, New York still remained very much a 19th century town. Boston already boasted a grand public library, but none existed in Manhattan (the blocks on Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets were still occupied by a gigantic Egyptian-style reservoir, where people strolled on Sunday afternoons). Farms covered more than half of the city’s land. New York continued to be politically controlled by Tammany bosses and the city was still paying off the Tweed Ring’s debts. Nearly 300 million gallons of raw sewage a day were dumped into the waterways surrounding Greater New York.

The Brooklyn Bridge was the only direct link to Manhattan for the hundreds of thousands of commuters from Brooklyn and Queens. A tunnel project under the Hudson River had been abandoned. New Jersey ferries reached the city in about fifteen minutes but could be delayed by fog or ice floes.

Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, the city’s leading newspaper, had become sensational, and competed for millions of readers with William Randolph Hearst’s Journal. Adolph Ochs had recently purchased the failing New York Times and made it profitable. Competition caused most of the city’s newspapers to lower their prices to a penny. A postage stamp cost two cents.

Nearly half the city’s population lived in slums. But Fifth Avenue was still a real neighborhood, with a spaciousness that has long since disappeared from this part of town. You could see the sky here, down the block, over the brownstones and beyond. One could still promenade on the broad slate sidewalks framing the cobblestoned avenue. Horse drawn cabs and carriages rambled up and down the street. Here, as in most other city neighborhoods, the services of a traffic cop were not yet necessary.

Above 42nd Street, Fifth Avenue became an exclusive area, with block-long town houses and huge mansions patterned after European castles. Warren Leland’s Windsor Hotel was located in this affluent area, and was designed exclusively for those who aspired to a royal lifestyle. The hotel attracted the best class of people and had already eclipsed its former rivals. As industrialists Jay Gould and William H. Vanderbilt lived nearby, they had naturally brought the financial crowd closer to home after hours. The Windsor was soon dubbed the Wall Street Club and Night Stock Exchange. Luminaries who stayed at the hotel included J. Pierpont Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Presidents Grant, McKinley and Arthur, and opera stars like Adelina Patti and Nellie Melba.

The Windsor occupied a full block across 47th Street from the heiress Helen Gould’s impressive home. Built of seven brick and brownstone stories, it was larger than most of its neighbors. Inside, there were wide halls, marble and mosaic floors, terra cotta walls, a newsstand and telegraph office. All the latest gadgets and conveniences had been eagerly installed, including elevators, full electric lighting and a complete telephone system. Fresh palms and other greenery decorated the lobby; lacy curtains and rich drapes fell from every window. At the head of a tremendous central staircase was a circular reception room, mirrored from floor to ceiling. A domed roof beautifully flooded the space with natural ambient light.

Evangeline Adams and her secretary, Emma Brush, occupied a first floor suite. They were grateful to proprietor Warren Leland for his hospitality, as another posh hotel, the Fifth Avenue, had refused to allow Adams to practice astrology. Coming here had been a risk: the suite was expensive, running $84 a week. A skilled secretary like Emma could earn about $10 a week, a good salary at the time, yet not enough to pay for even a night’s stay at the Windsor. But the gamble seemed to be paying off, as Leland had already recommended Adams to several guests. She had seen clients and done astrological readings until long after midnight on Thursday, March 16. But Friday was a holiday, and the ladies were soon taking a much-needed rest. Thousands would be streaming up Fifth Avenue in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. Spectators had been clamoring for over an hour outside Evangeline’s first floor window, anxiously awaiting the event. The 350 Windsor residents had great views from the windows of the hotel.

It was a warm, clear day for New York in March and police officers were having a tough time keeping sightseers on the sidewalks. In the days before television, radio and film, the spectacle of a parade was a great attraction. At around three o’clock, approaching drums were heard. Riflemen passed in uniformed troops, dozens of horse and carriages followed, and an immense float drifted by, with young women in flowing gowns. Finally, members of the Ancient Order of the Hibernians ended the parade. The brass band played, hundreds of horses’ hooves clattered on the cobblestone streets, carriages lurched, and the crowd cheered with delight.

In the hotel, a gray-haired gentleman watched from a bay window on the second floor. Lighting a cigar, he casually tossed the match out the window. At that moment, a breeze rustled the sheer curtain and it was instantly ignited. Horrified, the man ran away as the head waiter, John Foy, tried to beat out the flames. But the fire quickly spread to the heavy drapes and then the wall. Foy dashed downstairs and out of the building towards a firebox across Fifth Avenue.

In an age when papers carried a daily Yesterday’s Fires column, accidents like this were a real and constant danger. Foy forced his way through the thick crowd. Reaching the curb, he was stopped by the cop who had been assigned to keep order and his shouts were drowned out by the celebrants and music.

Across 47th Street, David Dudley, Helen Gould’s African American chef, left the house with his friend Fred Johnson. They could see a thin line of smoke rising from the flagstaff of the hotel. Dudley eluded the double rows of police and ran into the Windsor, shouting Your hotel’s on fire! Seeing nothing wrong, the clerk, Leland’s nephew Simeon, blandly observed, You must be crazy. Dudley and Johnson raced upstairs to warn the guests, but were met with a thick cloud of smoke, and were forced to turn and run as the lower floor burst into a mass of flames.

Fifth Avenue Fire 1899

NY Public Library Picture Collection

The fire streamed to the top floors only five minutes after the blaze started, spreading up the center of the building and towards the rear. The tinderbox-like construction of the dried-out, almost 30-year-old hotel gave the flames every opportunity. Proprietor Warren Leland had just left his family in their fourth floor apartment and was shocked to see the front parlor ablaze, as he, too, found his way upstairs blocked by smoke and flame. No alarm had yet been rung within the hotel.

Outside, fancy parade carriages were passing the Windsor’s front. Clouds of smoke could now be seen, and shouts of The Windsor’s afire! rang out from the crowd. The spectators pushed towards the hotel from all sides, completely breaking up the parade. Police Commissioners passing the Windsor as part of the procession immediately tried to control the mob.

Frightened guests on lower floors got out quickly. But many residents, observing the parade or quietly resting in upper story rooms, were not aware of the blaze until too late. A Russian bath establishment adjoined the hotel. Bachelor E.J. Nellis got the shock of a Victorian lifetime as six wet and naked women burst into his room, crying for aid. He quickly helped them dress and get safely to the street.

The Duncan family was conducting a dancing class in Parlor 40 at the time. Keeping cool heads, the young teachers Isadora and Elizabeth got the 30 children, clad only in flimsy dresses and satin slippers, safely out of the hotel.

Evangeline Adams and Emma Brush were startled by noises outside their apartment. Opening the door, they found the floor dense with smoke. A man in the hall advised them to hurry and not bother locking up. Wary of the stranger, the ladies quickly gathered their most important belongings, and Evangeline locked not only her wardrobe, but the front door as well. Then the two walked out of the building unharmed.

Noisy fire wagons had begun to arrive but were impeded as their horses shied from approaching the mob at the front of the building. As firemen finally rushed into the lobby, Simeon Leland set off fire gongs and the head porter got out the emergency hose on the first floor. Suddenly, a huge man wearing the costume of the Ancient Order of the Hibernians rushed in, gesticulating and giving orders. In his drunk and excited state, he became entwined with the hose and threatened to interrupt fire-fighting efforts. The porter and police soon bundled him out the door.

The qualities that had made the Windsor an elegant showcase now contributed to its demise. Wide corridors all around the building made for a strong draft that fed the flames. The fire leapt through elevator shafts, consumed wide expanses of wall, fed on window hangings, and raced up wooden stairways. The immense domed skylight allowed the fire easy access to upper stories. Flames soon burst from front windows on every floor. A New York Times reporter wrote:

Women turned pale and screamed, little ones shrank back sobbing, and men felt the sweat break upon their brows, as the heads of panic-stricken people protruded from the hotel windows, turning now toward the flames and now toward the sidewalk, and calling for help in tones that made the hearers sick.

Within fifteen minutes of the alarm, fire fighters had run up ladders and were helping people down from upper floors. Yet the fire had simply spread too fast. Across the 47th Street, Helen Gould opened her parlor to the injured and some were taken across Fifth Avenue to a drugstore turned infirmary.

Leland’s daughter, Helen, panicked, and was the first to leap from the sixth floor, where the flames were fiercest, striking the pavement headfirst; she died instantaneously. The crowd watched horror-stricken as a mother threw her child to the street, dashing her to pieces, then jumped to her own death.

Many guests who had the presence of mind to use the rescue ropes in their rooms dropped from them on their descent. Iron fire escapes were red hot and fire fighters avoided spraying them with water, lest they’d crack and break away from the wall.

Outside, Evangeline Adams observed the victims, blackened by smoke and soot, dropping from above. She noticed a woman in a delicate tea gown hugging a kitten, apparently in a state of shock as she walked unconsciously across bodies laid out in the street. From her astrological point of view, Adams had a sense of destiny and fate as well as free will. She could see how this horrible event affected everyone involved. Some, like herself, had simply been lucky. Others had no control over their situations. And although some victims of the fire might have had an opportunity to save themselves, their emotional states led to injury or even death.

Firemen were already reaching upper stories with scaling ladders hung from windowsills. But the flames and smoke were so intimidating that many gave in to the impulse to leap to probable death below, rather than face what appeared to be a certain demise from the raging fire.

The hysteria of many was matched by control in others. A middle-aged man from North Dakota first carefully lowered his daughter and wife down to the street with an escape rope. Then he coolly wrapped his hands in towels and shot down the rope himself, drawing cheers from the transfixed crowd as he landed unharmed. Nurse Frances Troup incredibly carried her helpless, fainting patient, an invalid daughter of Leland’s, down five flights of fire escape to safety.

A Miss Wheeler, 24, had been so nervous about her health that she typically had a physician call from four to six times a day. When she and her mother found their hallway exit blocked by flame, Wheeler underwent a miraculous recovery. She ably lowered the safety rope to the ground, and deftly swung from the ledge, proceeding hand over hand to the street like a trained athlete. Her mother followed suit.

The fire was the worst hotel disaster New York had ever seen. Over 60 people lost their lives, with an incredible loss of property and valuables. Within an hour of the fire’s discovery, the Windsor was completely gutted. Evangeline and Emma watched in safety from the steps of Helen Gould’s home as the hotel walls fell, crashing to the ground with an enormous cloud of smoke and ash that shattered the plate-glass windows in stores across the street.

Did Evangeline Adams really predict the disaster? In later years, she’d also claim to have forecast the stock market crash of 1929 and the deaths of King Edward VII and opera star Enrico Caruso. Legend had it that Adams made astrology legal in New York State and that she also predicted World War II long before her death in 1932. Just what is true and what is exaggeration, sensationalism or story? And over a hundred years later, can we possibly learn the truth?

Chapter Two:  Looking Backwards

General Howe evacuating Boston

NY Public Library Picture Collection

Evangeline Adams often boasted of being descended from the famous New England Adams clan. At times she even gave the impression she was a direct descendant of President John Adams in order to gain credibility and impress her clients. But while Evangeline is not directly descended from the presidential Adamses, she is related to them, being born of a common ancestor. This places her firmly within one of the first families in the United States.

Many of Evangeline’s forebears shared qualities that she herself later possessed. A number of her father’s family held strong religious convictions and beliefs. As some of the first U.S. settlers, they were also vital, hard-working and courageous.

The first settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were Puritans, who had fled England to escape religious persecution. When Henry Adams decided to come to America with a family of ten in 1636, the high cost of living for a farmer in Somersetshire contributed to his decision. They prospered and were strong and healthy: despite many hardships, most of Henry’s sons lived well into their seventies and even eighties.

Henry’s seventh son Joseph would begin the presidential line. Joseph’s sixth son John returned to England with his mother several years after arriving in Massachusetts at the age of twelve. By the time he returned to America in 1652, he was a millwright with a wife and daughter. This family became some of the first settlers of Menotomy, now Arlington, Massachusetts.

Early genealogies typically contain a few distinct things that set them apart from modern histories. The first is that children were born to most married couples with almost shocking regularity. The mortality rate was high, so that even if families had ten or twelve children, many died in youth or infancy. Early death was the rule rather than the exception. Many women’s lives were also shortened by the difficulties of continuous childbearing, coupled with the hard work necessary to raise and support a large family in a rural setting. John’s eldest grandson, Joseph, born in Menotomy in 1688, lost his first wife and married again.

Colonial American communities were small, self-supporting and tightly-knit, as they depended upon each other for survival. Settlers’ conflicts with Native Americans were not uncommon, and the local militia were only a little less important than religion and education in the villages of Massachusetts. Joseph Adams distinguished himself as a Lieutenant in the militia, and his son William became an Ensign in 1771. But by this time it was the colonists’ mother country that William’s regiment was preparing to resist.

After 1763, British soldiers had been stationed in North America to enforce tighter tax, import and export restrictions, with many staying in Boston proper. Evangeline Adams’ great-great-great grandfather, now Captain William Adams, participated in the famous fight that would rout the British from Boston in 1776.

Captain Adams marched with his men to nearby Dorchester on General Washington’s order. Moving in with heavy artillery on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, the patriots seized the highland. By nightfall, some 2,000 men began to fortify Dorchester Heights. Even the elements helped the colonists, as a full Moon provided light for their efforts and a low mist shrouded them from view. To the eyes of General Howe and his fleet the next morning, two forts had appeared out of nowhere. The British had been outmaneuvered, and as a result, Howe and his men quietly left the city.

Although William had done well for himself, he wanted something better for his eldest son, John, born in 1750. So he educated and prepared him for a life in the clergy, the safest route to success in colonial Massachusetts. The close association of church and state still dictated some form of worship of all Massachusetts citizens, and churches were an important part of village life. John Adams became a Deacon at Menotomy in 1792.

Deacon John did not fare as well in marriage as in his career, and in conceiving eleven children, had three wives. John’s eldest son, John Jr., had been born in the town of his forefathers, newly renamed West Cambridge, in 1774. Growing up as the first son of a clergyman, he may have been expected to follow in his fathers’ footsteps. But John Adams Jr. elected to strike out on his own. After five generations of Adamses born and bred in the same town, John would marry at the age of 24 and settle down in North Andover, 20 miles north and west of his home, and not far from the Merrimack River towns of Lowell and Lawrence. Along with this propitious move, the century turned as well, and we come closer to the real characters in our story.

John III fell even further from the family tree, as he contented himself with the profession of shoemaker. When he met Elizabeth Allen Stevens when he was 23, he must have fallen deeply in love. Although they quickly registered their intentions with the local clerk and were married in January, 1827, son George Adams was born on April first of that year. However family and friends may have felt about this impetuous affair, John III lived in North Andover and remained a shoemaker all of his life, and he and Eliza raised a family of ten.

Young George Adams graduated from Phillips Academy, a well-known Andover school for boys, in 1846, and went on to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. George Adams must have had too much of the family shoe business and their settled life in Andover, and he was eager to travel and see the bigger cities outside of New England. And before long, he would also be the father of a little girl named Evangeline.

On the other side of the family, Evangeline Adams’ maternal grandparents, Isaac and Mary Butler Smith, lived in Exeter, New Hampshire, about 30 miles north of Andover. Their first child, Harriet, was born in 1829. The family moved to Maine and then Massachusetts over the years, probably following Isaac’s work as a machinist (a craftsman who used machine tools, produced precision metal parts or repaired machinery). By 1851, Isaac and Mary lived with their nine children in Dunkirk, New York; eldest daughter Harriet was already 22 at the time.

Dunkirk, NY time card

Dunkirk NY Historical Society

Dunkirk was a small village on the shores of Lake Erie. It had suffered from a depression and real estate collapse after 1836, and was rundown, with dilapidated buildings, cows roaming free, and geese and pigs taking over the town square. But it had been selected as the western terminus for the new railroad to the Great Lakes, which would replace the Erie Canal. By 1848, Dunkirk had become a boom-town, as investors, speculators and entrepreneurs hurried in to take advantage of the great opportunities promised by this new route to the west. In 1851, The New York & Erie Railroad was completed, becoming the longest train route in the U.S. and the first to connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes. The company must have offered many opportunities for skilled machinists like Isaac Smith. His granddaughter Evangeline claimed that he was also an inventor who made important contributions to the development of the locomotive engine.

Isaac seems to have been respected and well-liked in Dunkirk and at the New York & Erie Railroad machine shop. But in