Butte, America’s Story Episode 4 - Hazel Earle, Clairvoyant

Welcome to Butte, America’s Story. I’m your host, Dick Gibson.

“In all ages and in all times man has sought to pierce the veil of the future, and with the advance of civilization and progress the occult exercises a still greater fascination for mankind…” 

With that introduction, Western Resources Magazine’s issue entitled: Butte at the Dawn of the 20th Century, presented Hazel Earle, Clairvoyant.

Butte's large population with at least a modicum of disposable income attracted all sorts of entrepreneurs, from well-established professions like doctors, lawyers, and musicians to chimney sweeps and clairvoyants.

In Butte, Rev. Hazel Earle practiced as a spiritual medium in her office at 47 West Park in 1901. She was an ordained minister, at least as far as the First Spiritual Progressive National Association of Utah was concerned – they gave her a diploma – and she was legally allowed to perform marriages and funerals. Her effort led to “no less than twenty-seven professional men, including lawyers and physicians” being converted to a belief in spiritual phenomena. 

Rev. Earle reportedly pegged the time of Queen Victoria’s death in 1901 to within 75 minutes, two years before the fact. She conducted public meetings Sunday and Wednesday evenings, apparently including “life readings that would satisfy the most skeptical.”

The Thomas Block where Earle held forth (probably upstairs) burned down in 1912, but its 1913 replacement still stands on West Park Street. Some of her large public evening sessions were also conducted a few doors west, in room 36 at the Washington Block, which is gone today. Hazel Earle lived at 201 E. Granite Street, the Jacobs House on the corner opposite the Court House.

Among her seven local competitors was Madame Vera Zazell, a clairvoyant and palmist in 1902 who lived in Room 5 of the Stephens Hotel, at the corner of Park and Montana. Madame Zazell also reportedly assisted with mining exploration: she was, and I quote, “positively unexcelled and more than a few individuals have acquired large fortunes through following her advice.”

Most of Butte’s clairvoyants did their work from their homes, including Isabel Dewitt at 218 West Park, and Mrs. M.M. Guy at 203 South Dakota. Mrs. Charlotte Oxenstjerna provided palm-reading sessions at 53 West Gold, and Mrs. Hulda Ziegler, a widow, held forth at 306 West Quartz.

Hazel Earle practiced in Salt Lake City (258 Main Street, Room 2) in the summer of 1898 before coming to Butte. Uncertain records suggest that she was from Fayette, Iowa, and that she died in 1923. Despite her powers, she was only in Butte about a year, listed only in the city directory for 1901.

As writer Edwin Dobb has said, "Like Concord, Gettysburg, and Wounded Knee, Butte is one of the places America came from."

Join us next time for more of Butte, America’s Story.