Esther MitchellTHE CAST OF CHARACTERS
Esther Mitchell

If any of the Holy Rollers could be said to have had wretched childhoods, it would have been the Mitchells. In 1894, when Esther was six, their mother, Martha, died of typhoid in Newberg, Oregon, and their father, Charles, essentially abandoned his family.

 

Charles Mitchell was described, on the one hand, as a “nothing,” and, on the other, as “a man of strong peculiarities and eccentricities.” He was a Quaker not known for his peaceful ways, a man who “could not argue, or debate, or reason with anyone without flying off the handle.” After his wife died, he joined the Salvation Army, and soon it consumed his every waking thought. He was intoxicated with the Salvation Army, so much that his seven children would have been little worse off had he spent his evenings drinking at a saloon, and his days sleeping off a drunk. Nothing could keep him from his religious devotions--not even taking care of his children, five of whom at the time of his wife’s death were between the ages of six and fifteen. Eventually Charles Mitchell returned to Illinois, where the family had migrated from. He remarried, but he never brought any of his brood out to live with him.

Esther Mitchell, fifteen in 1903, was the youngest Mitchell, a piano player for the Salvation Army, and was said to not be “in complete harmony with this wicked world.” She was considered to be gentle and kind, but she rarely smiled, had “a far away look in her eyes,” and “a dreamy, absorbed expression.” She was also “given much to silent thought”--especially that summer she spent with the Holy Rollers and Edmund Creffield on Smith Island.

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Photos on the right are stills from How the Fire Fell, Edward P. Davee’s movie based on the Holy Rollers.

Most were taken by Destiny Lane.
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Esther Mitchell

Brighit Thomas as Esther Michell
Brighid Thomas as Esther Mitchell

Esther Mitchell
Ether Mitchell & Her Brothers
Brighid Thomas, Jason Haines, Tim Crabtree, and Ed Vilderman
as Esther, George, Perry & Fred Mitchell
Esther Mitchell

Ether Mitchell & Her Brothers

Jason Haines, Tim Crabtree, Ed Vilderman & Brighid Thomas
George, Perry, Fred and Esther Mitchell

Esther Mitchell

Ether MitchellBrighid Thomas as Esther Mitchell

Union Depot, Seattle

Ether MitchellBrighid Thomas as Esther Mitchell

Creffield's Grave Marker
Esther & Maud
Brighid Thomas & Maren McGuire as
Esther Mitchell & Maud Hurt Creffield
Steilacoom Asylum
Creffield's Followers