SPIRITUALIST MEDIUM JOHN MURRAY SPEAR

John Murray Spear (1804–1887) was an American Universalist minister turned radical spiritualist medium. Convinced he channeled spirits of eminent dead (including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin), Spear claimed to receive divine blueprints for utopian inventions. His most infamous act was constructing the “New Motive Power” or “Electrical Infant”—a mechanical messiah built in 1854 at High Rock, Massachusetts, intended to birth a new era of perpetual energy and human perfection. Followers believed the machine came alive during rituals. The device was later destroyed by mob. Spear’s blend of spiritualism, abolitionism, free love, and techno-mysticism made him one of antebellum America’s most eccentric and forgotten visionaries.