Celia Storey, the multi-talented journalist and midwife of the Old News weekly column in this newspaper, had an interesting piece recently on a 100-year-old incident in which a "European meteorologist" on the faculty of the University of Michigan predicted the end of the world due to an alignment of the planets causing vast explosions of gas on the sun.
It turned out that Professor Allen F. Porta was neither a meteorologist nor a faculty member at Michigan.
While that prediction caused a bit of public panic, Arkansans seemed to take it in stride. However, there are plenty of instances from our history when surprising numbers of Arkansas residents fell victim to doomsday prophesies.
As any kid who was forced to sit through Vacation Bible School can attest, prophesies of doom have an ancient lineage in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Generations of Christians have awaited the return of Jesus to the earth and the subsequent end of the world.
The imminent return of Jesus was made known in a variety of ways. In 1806 a hen in the English town of Leeds began laying eggs bearing the phrase "Christ is coming" written in English. In 1980 televangelist and founder of the Christian Coalition Pat Robertson informed his 700 Club audience that the end was nigh: "I guarantee you by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world."
Not all doomsday predictions were religious in nature. In 1910 a considerable number of people feared the end of life on earth as the planet would soon pass through the tail of Halley's Comet. Then there were people--often black women--who seemed to be able to see into the future. It is a remarkable paradox that even during the era of Jim Crow segregation, allowances were made for black female fortune tellers. On at least one occasion, even the rumor of a forthcoming calamity by a black seer caused local consternation.
In 1909, rumors began circulating in the city of Newport that Caroline Dye, a local resident and aging seer of renown, had predicted that a tornado would destroy the town. A giant tornado had shortly before wreaked destruction on the Delta city of Brinkley, so the rumors caused "a deputation of citizens" to visit with "Aunt Caroline."
She assured everyone that she made no such prediction "and that such rumors are entirely false and lies besides." One local newspaper wrote that "Aunt Caroline Dye, the voodoo woman, finder of lost treasures and recoverer of stolen horses and property, has spoken."
A few years earlier in May 1903, Pine Bluff was the scene of widespread panic--especially among the city's majority-black population--when "a negro prophetess" predicted that a tornado would destroy the city. Ellen Burnett, described by an Arkansas Gazette reporter as "an under-sized, stockily-built young negress," had foretold the destruction of the city following a vision in which God "said to me, 'Go and warn my people to leave the city, and not to stop under six miles.'" Burnett was unsure as to the exact means by which the city would be destroyed (perhaps by a cyclone, as tornadoes were often called), but it would occur on Friday, May 29, 1903.
Word of the prophecy spread quickly and many people left town before the feared Friday. Jefferson County Sheriff James Gould announced his officers would mount around-the-clock patrols in black neighborhoods to protect abandoned homes. The Jefferson Fencibles militia unit was also put on alert. A murder trial scheduled for the Jefferson County courthouse had to be postponed due to witnesses fleeing town. Only three students reported for classes at Merrill Colored School out of 500 enrolled students. Ellen Burnett traveled to Little Rock.
Pine Bluffians of both races were reported to be anxious as Friday, May 29, rolled around. The daylight hours were peaceful enough, but as the Pine Bluff Daily Graphic reported: "About 5 p.m. Friday the clouds grew darker and it began to rain lightly, which caused some uneasiness on the part of a few." Then, suddenly, the skies cleared and the threat was over. The Gazette sniffed that Ellen Burnett's own family did not leave town, noting that she was "a prophetess without honor."
One group of people came to Arkansas to ride out an anticipated world war between Catholics and Protestants, with the hope of welcoming a new millennium as predicted in the book of Revelation. John A. Battenfield, a Disciples of Christ minister in Illinois, began in 1912-13 publishing a call for the faithful to "cut loose from Babylon" and establish communities in isolated areas and there restore the true church once the war ended. The resulting Incoming Kingdom Missionary Unit chose to settle at Gilbert, deep in the mountains of Searcy County.
The Battenfield followers were accepted in Gilbert, with one member being elected mayor of the tiny village. The Incoming Kingdom followers built homes, established businesses, and sponsored training in traditional skills such as spinning and weaving. Plans called for communal ownership of property, but that was not implemented. The goal of abolishing the use of money was likewise abandoned.
The failure of a world war to begin in 1923 as Battenfield had calculated did not signal the end of the Incoming Kingdom. Like so many failed prophets, Battenfield at first tried to finesse the situation, noting that "the point for chief emphasis is not a date." As one student of the phenomenon has written, "the colony disintegrated not because of prophecy of a religious war failed, but because the leader, [the] magnetic John A. Battenfield, suffered a nervous breakdown."
Battenfield announced in February 1925 that he would bring back to life a community member who had died the day before. Wagonloads of faithful and the curious came to watch the resurrection, but Rev. Battenfield failed to show. It was announced later than he had suffered a mental breakdown.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
Editorial on 12/15/2019