Olive A Blodgett was born in New Hampshire about 1840. She married Joseph C. Blodgett and by 1860 they were living in Columbia, Wisconsin where Joseph worked as a farmer. They would later move to Davenport. Olive was listed as a slate-writing medium presenting communications from H. M. Hoxie at one of The Mississippi Valley Spiritualist Association seances in April 1887. Joseph was a traveling salesman at the time. Olive was later listed as a physician in the Davenport 1890 directory.
Both Joseph and Olive were involved with Spiritualism. In 1871, they held a birthday dinner in honor of Will C. Hodges. The Progressive Thinker vol. 3 no. 67, 7 March 1871 wrote, “Spirit ‘Pansy’ took control of her medium, Mrs. Ollie A. Blodgett, and recited a beautiful poem entitled ‘The Message of the Flowers.’”
At a meeting in Dubuque, the Sioux City Journal, 5 April 1892, reported “…platform tests by Mrs. Blodgett, a trance medium, of Davenport, through whose entranced brain ‘Bright Eyes,’ an Indian girl spoke, asking and receiving from the audience recognition of many who had ‘passed out’ to the spirit land.”
In a Letter to Editor of The Progressive Thinker vol. 6 no. 157, 26 Nov 1892, Olive wrote, “Your paper is most excellent and a general favorite. About the holidays I intend to do some missionary work in sending out a few yearly subscriptions of The Progressive Thinker, for I count each day lost in which I have done no good or made nobody happy. We have got to be unselfish, charitable and kind; and our work must be practicable and our relations to the human family must be to do good everywhere we see it should be done; for, as you say, we cannot receive the highest spiritual teachings and do nothing.”
Olive was involved with the Ladies Independent Union which helped care for Mt. Pleasant Park, the local Spiritualist camp. She was also Vice President and of the board of directors of the Mississippi Valley Spiritualists Association in 1890, and a national delegate in 1893 and 1894. In October 1894, Olive said the Invocation and Cora V. L. Richmond the dedication for the new headquarters of the National Spiritualist Association in Washington, D.C.
Olive was still a prominent member of the Mississippi Valley Spiritualists association at the time of her death in 1894. In her will, she left her husband her property in Summerland, California, a Spiritualist community, as well as in Tacoma, Washington. The Quad-City Times (Davenport, IA), 16 December 1894 reported, “The husband is requested to provide for the cremation of the wife’s body and the scattering of her ashes to the four winds, and thereafter to arrange for a memorial service at such time and place as will result in the most good to humanity.”