“A party of 30 or 40 people believe that Mrs. John E. Martin is Christ manifest in the flesh.”

A religious mania with a gender twist arose in urban Ohio in the late nineteenth century, according to an article in the July 18, 1886 New York Times. The story:

“Cincinnati--One of the most remarkable religious manias of which there is any record has broken out in a little circle in this city. A party of 30 or 40 people, most of them prominent and above the average in intelligence, believe that Mrs. John E. Martin, of Walnut Hills, is Christ manifest in the flesh, and that her sister, Mrs. John F. Brock, is the Holy Ghost. The followers of these two young women meet at Mrs. Brook’s house and worship them both. Mrs. Martin has exerted some strange and wonderful influence that has put them completely in her power, and they are fanatics on the subject. One of the followers of this woman Christ is named Jerome. He was a bookkeeper here for the Cincinnati agency of D. Appleton & Co., the New-York publishers. He gave up his position of $1,800 a year to serve the female Saviour of mankind. To an Enquirer reporter who saw him to-day he said in an earnest and eloquent conversation: ‘I have seen God face to face in the last half hour.’

A young man named Cook, who works in the auditor’s office of the Adams Express Company, has also been captured. He resigned his position, and has attached himself to the new sect. They believe that all churches are frauds, and the preachers a set of fools. Accounting for the fact that Christ should manifest himself in a female, they say that in heaven there are no sexes, and the Saviour is as liable to appear in a woman as in a man. Mrs. Martin, the ‘New Christ,’ and Mrs. Brook, the ‘Holy Ghost,’ they say, are the only two perfect women on earth, and that the millennium is at hand. This movement has been going on quietly for a year without becoming generally known. The women seclude themselves, and will not be seen by any one who is not a worshiper, or vouched for by one of them. Many have sold their homes and taken houses near the woman on the hill. Those who have given up their positions say they do not need work or money. All they need is spiritual food, and this will be furnished by the Lord, just as it was furnished to the children in the wilderness.

A Miss Andrews, who lives with her mother on Walnut Hills, is almost insane from excitement, and passes her whole time in weeping, singing, and praying. Her mother has tried to show her the folly of her belief, but in vain. Among the worshipers of these new gods are Mrs. Judge Worthington, Miss Julia Carpenter, Miss Emma Black, Mrs. L.H. Foulds, Mr. John Cook, Miss Cook, Mr. E.W. Jerome, Miss Marie Andrews, Mr. and Mrs. J.L. Burke, Mr. and Mrs. Reuben Sherwood, Mrs. Flora Miller, Mr. Sheppard, Miss Homitt, and Mrs. Crocker. In this list are numbered some of the best people in Cincinnati. Exposure to public ridicule, it is thought, will bring them to their senses.”