Although newspapers reported on Mrs. Mary E. Williams numerous times, her history is cloaked in mystery. There is a mention of a daughter, Cora in 1891, but it’s unclear where Mary was born, when she died and who she may have been married to.
By the 1880s, Mary was an active medium in New York City, bing notorious in both positive and negative ways. In Medium and Daybreak, 21 August 1885, Charles Day wrote that Mary was a leading medium having regular seances in New York in her parlors. Two of her spirits guides were, Crowfoot, an Indian chief, and Papa Holland. He described the elegantly furnished parlor with about 20 ladies and gentlemen attending contained a cabinet that was commonly used at the time. “The lady, becoming apparently semi-conscious, stepped into the cabinet, that was two curtains suspended on one side of the parlor. In a few minutes, after a little singing by the audience, a bell rang inside the curtains, and a lady of the house, who afterwards acted as reporter, taking down remarks of the materialized spirits, announced the arrival of a spirit.”
In 1885, Mary began publishing The New York Beacon Light. Beacon lights were a form of early electric lighting for theater performances. The Religio-Philosophical Journal noted that “The journal was the work of Mrs. M.E. (“Minnie”) Williams, a long-lived and rather notorious New York materializing medium. She was the vehicle for a variety of spirits, including a Mr. Holland (a philosopher), Bright Eyes (a baby), Priscilla (a spinster), and Henry Ward Beecher, and was said to produce 30-40 materialized forms at a single seance.” In 1889, she gave seances at Gilsey House and was paid large sums by George W. Kidd.
During the 1890s, Mary was a guest at the First Society of Spiritualists and lectured about Abraham Lincoln as a spiritualist at the First Spiritualist church of New York. It was the largest gathering ever for the church. She gained more notoriety in 1891 when the second wife and widow of a wealthy entrepreneur, John Andreson, sold her a house valued at $25,000 for $1.00. That became part of several properties she owned in the city.
At that time, she was President of the Spiritualistic Society that met at Adelphi Hall. The Evening World, 10 February 1891, wrote, “Mrs. Williams is a most magnetic woman. She is perhaps thirty-five years old, tall, full-figured and handsome. Not pretty, nor beautiful—but handsome. She has an intellectual cast of features and is obliged to wear glasses. She is a painfully nervous woman, but withal a pleasant person, speaking directly to the point in a manly, businesslike way, though with that indescribable something that makes the woman charming.” The article continued quoting her “If Spiritualists were treated by the press with the same fairness and honesty that other earnest, honest investigators are, there would be more encouragement, both for the Spiritualists and the rest of the world.”
There was always some question about the legitimacy of Mary’s mediumship. The Evening World, 8 November 1894, ran a story from Paris, France. Mrs. Mary Williams from New York has arranged seances in St Petersburg, Berlin and The Hague after Paris. “Mrs. Williams arrived by the steamship Bourgogne, Oct. 21, accompanied by her manager, Mr. Macdonald. She stopped at the boarding-house of Mme. Raulet, on Rue Hamelin.” People were suspicious during her séance and laid a trap. One person seized a spirit and found it to be a doll. They also found Mrs. Williams to be in men’s clothing. She fled to London, “Claiming that she had been trapped wickedly and made the victim of a horrible plot.” had transferred the house in forty-sixth street to Mrs. Williams for the consideration of $1.” The Post Star, 3 December 1894, wrote, “The exercises at Psychical hall yesterday afternoon consisted mainly of a defense of Mrs. M. E. Williams, the medium who was recently exposed in Paris.” No details were given.
In 1899, a colony was being formed on Statin Island by the school of Psychic Philosophy organized n the spring of 1898. 150 acres on Meisner Avenue near the village of Richmond was bought. Wooden acres overlooking the lower bay were cleared to build cottages. Officers of the school include Mrs. M. E. Williams of Manhattan, president.
In 1904, Mary was in trouble with the law again. Detective Thomas Beet, paid for seances and charged her with obtaining money under false pretenses. She tried to get him to buy stocks during the seances, saying she was speaking for his father’s spirit. If there was a conviction, it wasn’t published.
From 1918 until 1922, Mary was inspirational lecturer, medium and then pastor at the First Spiritualist Church in New York City. There is no know record of her death.