...So it was both high-time and all but forgotten, this unfinished business, when a quasi-literate couple from Kentucky showed up in Middle America, 81 years after Joanna Southcott’s death. In 1895, they claimed they were, together, the seventh messenger of God. In other words, they said We are that missing baby, now split into two parts: female and male--despite the funny math (and the funny science). They traveled for seven years, had two children, and wrote a 781-page book. This would have been a funny tag line in the history of religious esoterica had it not panned out as it did—had it not propelled one of the most successful social experiments in American history. That Kentucky couple went on to Benton Harbor, which is where I first heard of Joanna Southcott.

Little engravings of Joanna made their way across the Atlantic. They came bobbing on boats or were slipped through mail slots; they came with the devoted and also the forsaken, who sought the panacea.

Inside a boxy brick building in Michigan, a picture of Joanna in a bonnet rests on a mantel, in a room that appears to be growing large desks at various angles: four are pushed together to form a large island in the center. This heavy block is covered with stacks of white paper, fixed in spots with a tub of peanut butter, a bouquet of peacock feathers, a checkbook, and a pink stuffed animal. A large copy machine, built like a tank, rests on one side of the room and spits out all documents in cyan-blue.