Edmund Creffield, the Holy Roller Cult, and the “Brides of Christ” Murders
In the winter of 1903, sixteen-year-old Esther Mitchell of Corvallis, Oregon caught the eye of a local evangelical cult leader: Edmund Creffield, or “Joshua,” as his flock called him. Creffield intended to marry Esther, but before that could happen, she was whisked away by her older sister Phoebe to the Boys’ and Girls’ Aid Society in Portland. Phoebe mostly wanted to protect her sister from herself. Esther was not afraid of Creffield; she was not running away from him on purpose. On the contrary, she believed him to be a prophet on earth—God’s chosen one. And he had chosen her! Really, Phoebe hadn’t whisked her away, but dragged her kicking and screaming.
This week on Out of the Past: Edmund Creffield, the Holy Roller Cult, and the “Brides of Christ” Murders.
When Edmund Creffield came to Corvallis, no one knew much about his background, and so neither do we. We know that he was likely a German immigrant, raised in the church. We get our first real glimpse of him working for the Salvation Army in Portland, where he would often hijack sermons and drive them off the rails. His overly zealous faith eventually led him to break ties with the organization. They weren’t pleased with him, and he was skeptical about their practices and the sincerity of their faith. He left to join a radical Pentecostal group in Salem, which is where he solidified his militant views. Bolstered by his newly invigorated ideological fervor, he moved on to Corvallis.
Corvallis provided fresh ground for Creffield, a blank page on which to write his story. And the story he wrote was of his own divinity. In his early sermons, he made it clear that he believed himself to have a direct line of communication with God. He soon had a small but faithful following of converts who hung on his every word. They would hold long prayer meetings—sometimes a day or more in length—during which they would sing, chant, shout, cry, and roll on the floor. This was part of why they were referred to as “Holy Rollers”—this, and their belief that if they conducted themselves with the proper amount of righteousness, their names would be inscribed on a “Holy Roll” in heaven.
The more their group gathered, the more they ruffled the feathers of people who weren’t part of the sect. By the summer of 1903, the group was forbidden from gathering within town limits, because of the “Babel of weird sounds” that would emanate from their meetings, and they spent the season camping on Kiger Island in the middle of the Willamette River. It was here that Creffield announced that he was now “Joshua, the holy Prophet,” God’s chosen representative on earth, and that at a later time, he would become Elijah, the Restorer. For all effects and purposes, he set himself up as the new Jesus Christ. It was here, too, that he pushed his flock even further to surrender their inhibitions: to give themselves over completely to prayerful ecstasy, and, according to some accusations, to do so without any clothes on.
Before we go on, I want to go over the cast of characters in the Holy Rollers. Most of them are tangled up in the same family tree.
I’ve already mentioned Esther Mitchell. The Mitchell children had had it rough—their mother passed at a young age and their father didn’t stick around to see that they were raised properly. With this history of abandonment, it’s easy to see how Esther and her sisters could be drawn toward a cult.
Charles Mitchell and his late wife Martha had five children: Donna Mitchell (later Starr), Phoebe, Perry, George, and the youngest, Esther. Donna was one of the first to join Creffield’s flock, along with her husband Burgess Starr. Esther, Donna, and Burgess were all on the island that summer. So were other members of the Starr clan, including Burgess’ brother and niece.
Another important family tree to be familiar with going forward is the Hurt clan. Orlando Victor Hurt, who went by “O.V.,” and his wife Sarah had four children: Mae, Maud (who will play a major part in our story), Frank, Roy (adopted), Sarah, Mae, Frank, and Maud all fell heavily under Creffield’s influence. O.V. is important because although he was not himself at first a member of the church, his house became their headquarters for a while. But we haven’t gotten to that point yet.
On the island, Creffield spoke of new revelations given to him by God. He commanded the renunciation of worldly things, and repentance through the laying on of hands—and as we’ll see, he got freer and freer about where he would lay his hands. During the time they were camped out there, Maud Hurt’s fiance James Berry came to see how they were getting along. He owned a bicycle shop in town, and had lent Creffield money some time ago to help him in starting his church. Creffield told him that they were ready to build a tabernacle, and asked him for more money, telling him that God had cancelled the original debt, so he owed Berry nothing. Berry wasn’t having this, and told Creffield he would get no more money from him. This led Maud, at Creffield’s urging, to break off her engagement with Berry.
Soon Creffield was telling more members of his congregation to cancel their engagements. He began to preach the doctrine that earthly marriages were carnal, unholy. In addition, he initiated his practice of endowing the women in the group with the “grace of love,” a process that involved a private “prayer service” held in a tent. It’s not clear what exactly happened in the tent, but when it was done, Creffield ordered the woman to embrace him and kiss him. As you can imagine, such developments were not well received by many of the men, and so most of them were “shunned”: exiled from the flock and cut off from their loved ones who remained in the church. Soon the only men in the group who remained in God’s good graces, besides Creffield, were Frank Hurt, Lee Campbell, and Sampson Levins.
By this time, suspicion was running rampant that Creffield and his followers were engaged in God knows what kind of salacious rituals. Rumors of naked orgies began to proliferate. Newspapers all over the northwest were starting to report on the strange goings-on in Corvallis. The Salvation Army itself decided to step in at one point, sending one of their prominent officers, Captain Charles Brooks, to the island to investigate. Astonishingly, Brooks fell under Creffield’s spell in a matter of days, and was soon a devout member of the Holy Rollers. The Salvation Army, throwing up their hands, moved their branch out of Corvallis entirely.
Since Creffield couldn’t count on James Berry to finance the building of his church, and since the rains were coming soon, they couldn’t stay on the island. Salvation came in the form of an invitation from Maud and her mother Sarah to bring everyone to their house: the O.V. Hurt residence, which sat just outside of Corvallis town limits.
At Hurt’s, the group continued their practice of rolling around on the floor for hours on end to atone for their sins. They also starved themselves and deprived themselves of earthly comforts. O.V. himself initially had no interest in Creffield’s church, and considered him to be a nuisance. He only allowed the Rollers to come into his home because that way, at least, his wife and children would be where he could keep track of them. It was an intensely uncomfortable situation, however, as he was reviled and shunned by the church. They called him the “Black Devil” and warned him that he was going to hell. On October 28th, the pressure got to him, and he saw the light: he converted, acknowledging Creffield’s status as Prophet. He hung a sign on the door of the house which read, “NO ADMITTANCE EXCEPT ON GOD’S BUSINESS.” He quit his job, stopped shaving, and began to dress in ragged old clothes.
The day after O.V. quit his job, there was a notorious incident wherein the flock burned a large amount of furniture, musical instruments, and other household goods on the lawn of the house, renouncing them as worldly luxuries. In the frenzy, they also burned a cat and a dog. Some whispered that they had even burned a child, and that it was little Martha, the Hurts’ recently adopted daughter. This part turned out not to be true, fortunately.
Even if there had not been an actual human sacrifice, the citizens of Corvallis were up in arms. About two thousand of them gathered around the next day to gawk at the remains of the bonfire. Some girls and women were yanked from the Hurt house by family members. A crowd converged on the house, breaking windows with rocks. Officials detained Creffield and Brooks (the converted Salvation Army captain) and subjected them to sanity examinations. They weren’t able to declare them insane, but they did scare them into leaving town for a few days.
But before long, they were back in the Hurt residence. In fact, they set to work expanding the house, beginning the process of building their tabernacle. While this was going on, James Berry managed to convince O.V. to come to Portland with him. There, after a week of thinking about it, O.V. decided that he had been right the first time: Creffield was a menace, and his religion was a sham. He returned home and kicked the prophet out, along with Brooks. O.V.’s son Frank, like the rest of the Hurts, was still faithful, however: he and his wife Mollie rented a house just outside of town, like his father’s, and the church set up its practice again there.
It was during this time, in November of 1903, that the events happened with which we began our story. Esther Mitchell was behaving very strangely, appearing dazed and going into fits of religious ecstasy. Her older sister Phoebe, as I’ve said, had her committed to the Boys’ and Girls’ Aid Society in Portland. This did nothing but add fire to Esther’s zeal: She renounced her family and spent most of her time there rolling on the floor and shouting Hallelujah.
Around this same time, rumors of perverted acts were running rampant. Someone reported having seen a naked Creffield leading his equally naked flock in crazed outdoor rites back when the group was still on Kiger Island. They even claimed to have taken a photograph, which, if it was ever real, does not survive. So eventually, on the night of January 4, 1904, a small vigilante group who called themselves “The White Caps” (styled after the KKK) stormed Frank Hurt’s house and abducted Creffield, Brooks, and two other men. They ferried them across the river to town, where they tarred and feathered them and told them they would lynch them if they ever set foot in Corvallis again.
But Creffield jumped right back onto his feet. The very next day, after Frank Hurt had spent all night helping him clean up, he married Maud Hurt at the Albany courthouse, witnessed by Frank and his wife Mollie. The smell of tar was still strong on Creffield as they performed the vows.
The White Caps were furious. They convened on the Rollers’ headquarters and confronted Frank Hurt, threatening to give him the tar-and-feather treatment as well, but Creffield, knowing he was in danger, had skipped town. Maud, his new bride, moved back in with her parents. She told her father O.V. that she was through with Creffield, that she would have no more to do with him.
So where had Creffield gone? Portland. Someone else who had recently moved to Portland was Burgess Starr, husband of Esther’s sister Donna. Around the same time that Phoebe Mitchell took Esther to the Boy’s and Girl’s Aid Society, Starr had grabbed Donna and left Corvallis. He had been with the flock since the island, but he couldn’t take it anymore. And when he learned that Creffield was now in Portland as well, he revealed what had been the last straw for him. He told police that Creffield had committed adultery with his wife (adultery was a crime punishable by two years in prison at the time). Soon, twelve other men came forward with similar complaints. Once Burgess got Donna to sign a statement confirming that she had indeed had relations with Creffield, a warrant was signed for his arrest. When they searched for him, however, he had fled. A reward was posted for his capture.
Other members of the church remained faithful to Creffield, despite his disappearance. They continued their eccentric practices in Corvallis, doing things that made their families and acquaintances start to doubt their sanity. In addition to rolling around and praying loudly as they had already been doing, they began going outside bareheaded and barefoot, dressed in ascetic “Mother Hubbard” dresses and depriving themselves of everyday comforts. And there was a shocking disclosure: although the rumors about a baby having been burned at the October bonfire turned out to be false, O.V. now claimed that it had almost really happened. Sarah and the others had wanted to sacrifice baby Martha, at Creffield’s suggestion. Afterwards, O.V. reported, Sarah and her daughters would have nothing to do with the child. They thought she was unclean.
Before long, almost all of the congregation had been put in institutions. Maud, Frank, Mollie, and Sarah, among others, were committed to the Oregon State Insane Asylum in Salem. Sarah literally went kicking and screaming, tearing off all her clothes when they came for her. She shouted at her husband that she hated him, but loved Creffield.
For months, nothing happened. Things were quiet. They were all gone! It looked like the beginning of the end for the Holy Rollers. The people of Corvallis could breathe a sigh of relief. But in July, after months without any word from the prophet, O.V.’s adopted 14-year-old son Roy Robinett was shocked, while digging for bait worms, to find Creffield hiding underneath the house. He was naked, filthy, and emaciated. He had been hiding there for three months. Sarah had been sneaking him food, which was why she had put up such a fight when she was taken to the asylum, and why he was now in such bad shape without her help.
After he was given a few months to regain his health, Creffield, now claiming the messianic status of “Elijah,” went on trial in September for adultery. They tried to make the trial short and sweet, in an attempt to refrain from humiliating the women involved. If the jury had heard everything, it’s likely they would have sought a way to put Creffield away for life, or worse. What we know from information given to officials by some of the young women held at the Boys’ and Girls’ Aid Society is that starting shortly after the bonfires, Creffield had revealed to the women in his flock that they were all “Brides of Christ,” and that he was the new Joseph who would bring forth the next son of God. The women in the church were all his brides, but only one was to be the Holy Mother. There was one condition, however: the woman had to be a virgin, which would seem to rule out many of his followers, who were obviously wives and mothers already. There was good news though: Creffield said that he could revirginalize members of his flock by “purifying” them through the laying on of hands and, presumably, other kinds of laying. So the orgies commenced, and before long, anyone in the church who actually had been a virgin was one no longer—except Esther, who was tucked away in Portland at the Boys’ and Girls’ Aid Society. And, when Creffield told everyone that God had revealed to him the identity of the Holy Mother, guess who it was? Esther. He even sent Frank and Mollie to Portland in what was probably an effort to abduct her, which may be the reason that she was then released from the Society and sent to live with her estranged father in Illinois. All this caused Creffield to have to revise God’s plan for him, and as we know, a few days later he married Maud.
At any rate, Donna’s testimony that she’d had relations with Creffield was sufficient to have him convicted and sentenced to the Oregon State Penitentiary, where he served for seventeen months. Upon his release in December 1905, he was more eager than ever to get the flock worshipping again. By now, his followers had mostly been released from their institutions, including Maud. Any deprogramming she had undergone was completely reversed: she was more devoted to him than ever. She had, she told him, been forced by her family to divorce him while he was imprisoned, but in April they were remarried.
Creffield wrote this letter to her father, O.V.: “Hurt: God has resurrected me. I have now got my foot on your neck. God has restored me to my own. I will return to Oregon and gather together all my followers. Place no obstruction in my way or God will smite you. Creffield.”
Creffield was furious about the treatment he and his followers had received in the press. They had written articles ridiculing him and the tenets of his beliefs. He announced to his reassembled congregation that he had called for wrath to be visited on “modern Sodoms” like Portland, Seattle, Corvallis, and San Francisco. A few days later, the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 nearly destroyed the city. Of course, Creffield took full credit for the tragedy.
Like many leaders of his kind, Creffield received divine revelation that his flock was to migrate in order to escape persecution, in his case, to a place up north on the Yachats River. The congregation convened in Newport, and two brides of Christ, Cora and Sophie Hartley, were there with everyone else. Unbeknownst to them all, so was their father Louis. Louis Hartley walked up to Creffield, gun in hand, and pulled the trigger. The weapon didn’t fire. He shot four more times at Creffield, each shot a failure. The flock saw this as a sign that God was protecting Joshua, their prophet and leader on earth. In reality, the man who had sold Hartley the gun had sold him the wrong ammo, as he feared Hartley would do something dangerous. But that news didn’t make it to the flock. It was a miracle and a sign that he was indeed divine.
The Holy Rollers were driven out of every place they attempted to settle on their path up the coast. They made it to the Yachats River and the northernmost tip of Oregon, but Creffield eventually broke from the flock, determined to find a better location on his own, perhaps in British Columbia.
But Creffield didn’t go to Canada. He went to Seattle where he met up shortly afterward with his wife, Maud. Meanwhile, the rest of his followers continued to camp out by the sea, living on shellfish, awaiting word from their prophet.
At some point during this period, Esther Mitchell had returned to Oregon from Illinois . Everyone thought she had recovered her sanity. She worked various jobs in different cities, all the while awaiting her chance to rejoin Creffield, still convinced that she was the Holy Mother.
George Mitchell, Esther and Donna’s brother, had some time ago started receiving his own divine revelations. They came in the form of communications from God through the medium of his dead mother, Martha. Before long, these communications told him what he had to do: kill Edmund Creffield.
On May 7th, 1906, Mitchell made his way to Seattle and walked up to Creffield and Maud as they stood together in front of Quick’s drug store. He shot Creffield in the back of the neck at point blank range, and the cult leader fell to the ground, dead. He was only about thirty-three years old—as some like to point out, the same age as Jesus at the crucifixion. Maud fell to Creffield’s side, briefly overcome with grief, but she regained her composure very quickly. She didn’t believe Creffield could be killed. She was certain he would be resurrected. She even managed finally to get someone where she was being held to take her to the cemetery on the day she thought he would rise. As you might have guessed, he did no such thing.
After Mitchell was arrested, he sent a telegram to O.V. Hurt: “I’ve got my man. I am in jail here. George.”
The trial of George Mitchell was a sensation in the press. Mitchell himself was unrepentant, and his attorneys defended him on the basis of temporary insanity, which was an unusual strategy at the time. The basic idea, in addition to Mitchell saying he had received spirit messages from his dead mother, was that no man could have witnessed the vile and perverted things that had happened to his sister and other loved ones at Creffield’s hands without losing his mind, and public sentiment was overwhelmingly supportive of this idea. The most startling testimony came from O.V. Hurt, who revealed the extent of the licentiousness that had unfolded under his roof during the time that Creffield held his services: in particular, during the time that he was hiding out under the house. Sarah had not only been feeding Creffield, but when Hurt was off at work, she and his other followers would bring him into the house, and they would participate in even more depraved orgies than they had before. O.V.’s wife Sarah, despite her devotion to her prophet, was the last holdout—but finally even she consented to having sexual relations with Creffield while her children and the other members of the church looked on.
As you might expect, general sympathy fell so strongly with Mitchell that it was nearly impossible to select an impartial jury. And in fact, when it came time to reach a verdict, on July 10, 1906, it took them only twenty minutes: not guilty.
George had little time to celebrate this acquittal however. Just two days later, on July 12, Esther Mitchell walked up to George at the Union Depot railway station and shot him at point-blank range, just as he had done to Creffield. Mitchell fell to the ground, dead. Maud Hurt, by her own admission, had supplied the gun. They had avenged their prophet.
Esther’s trial, like George’s, was heavily attended and heavily covered by the media. Esther and Maud’s legal counsel put forth an insanity defense, just as in George’s had in his case. And like George, they displayed no remorse for what they had done. Both proclaimed their willingness to hang for their deeds. But finally, Esther and Maud were both deemed paranoid and thus mentally unfit.
The only remaining problem was what to do with them. They could be committed there, or—more economically for the state of Washington—they could be sent back to Oregon, where in all likelihood, they would be set free. Officials in Oregon were not enthusiastic about this last idea, and while they waited to work all of this out, both women were held in jail. On November 17, 1906, after several days of illness, Maud died. At first, it was thought to be an act of God, but medical examinations finally revealed the true cause: strychnine. Maud had committed suicide.
Esther was committed to Western State Hospital in Steilacoom, WA, where she spent just two years. Upon her release, She went back down to Oregon, where she moved in with her old friends, the Hurt family. She was married in 1914 to James Berry. (This guy really got around. She was his third wife and not his last. He had previously been married to her sister, and, you’ll recall, he was engaged to Maud when all of this started.) They lived a seemingly ordinary life for a short period of time. On August 2nd of that same year, Esther also took her own life, in the same manner as Maud, by drinking strychnine.
And that’s where the story ends, for the most part. If this were a novel, I’d think it would be difficult for the author to actually come up with all these different parts: religious zealots, a sex cult, a child bride, expensive trials, murders, suicide, and a whole lot of people rolling around on the floor for Jesus. In fact, there is a novel: Linda Crews’ Brides of Eden: A True Story Imagined, from 2017, which tells the story from Mae Hurt’s perspective. I haven’t read it yet, but I’m intrigued.
For the most part, the people of Corvallis tried to hide this stain on their history. People didn’t speak of it for years. Then, in 1953, anyone who still remembered it was horrified when a four-part article came out in the Sunday Oregonian that retold the whole story (albeit, not always accurately). Some suspect that there were people who would have gone to great lengths to keep this history buried, but journalism got there faster.
If you want to learn more about this case, I recommend reading Holy Rollers: Murder and Madness in Oregon’s Love Cult, by T. McCracken and Robert Blodgett. It’s a detailed examination of everything that happened over these strange years early in the century. The authors are pretty funny too. It’s a good read.
There’s also a movie made in 2013, How the Fire Fell, directed by Edward P. Davee, a Reed College film student. It’s very experimental, which in this case means that if you don’t already know the story, you’ll have no idea what you’re watching, but it’s atmospheric and faithful in its details (again, when you can make them out) to the actual story.
That's all for this week! Have a happy Halloween and stay safe!
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