Anna Bishop Scofield and Spiritualism
Library records identify Ammyeetis with Anna Bishop Scofield, born in 1835. A genealogical entry places her birth in Jamestown, New York, and names her parents as Elijah Ruggles Bishop and Amy Jenner. A Chautauqua County biography records her marriage to the businessman Carl Wylie Scofield in 1870. Her later writing supplies a more intimate view of her intellectual life. In How I Became a Spiritualist, published in the Religio-Philosophical Journal in December 1888, she recalled the influence of an older friend devoted to abolition and the advancement of women.
Scofield described their conversations about life after death and a promise that the friend would return if communication proved possible. At the friend’s deathbed she experienced what she understood as a vision of spiritual ascent. She later regarded continued contact as knowledge, rather than merely belief. The article was signed from The Bungalow at Fluvanna-on-Chautauqua, New York. Her formal education and wider writing career remain less well documented. The word Persian accompanies Ammyeetis on the held book’s title page, but should not be treated as evidence that Scofield was Persian.
Conscience, development and justice to oneself
The held volume of Insights and Heresies is the second edition, published in Boston by the Christopher Publishing House in 1916. Short, separately headed reflections allow Ammyeetis to move between spiritual evolution, mediumship, reincarnation, love, education and social conditions. Her dedication addresses people who maintain ownership of their conscience against both Church and State. For her, death does not automatically perfect character: development requires effort and continues beyond bodily life. These are Spiritualist convictions, presented with an assurance that belongs to the author.
