Agitator, The. A Semi-Monthly Journal of Reform / Devoted to Reform. 1858-1860 Monthly, then semimonthly Cleveland, OH. Editor: Mrs. Hannah F.M. Brown, editor and proprietor. Succeeded by: Banner of Light (Agitator transferred its subscription list to Banner of Light, 1860)

1/1, January 1858-3/13, April 1, 1860. 50 cents-$1.00 a year. 8-26 pp., 8 x 22 2/2. The 1859 Spiritualists Register describes it as "radical." The name reflects the more radical version of the sentiments that led The Spiritual Telegraph to adopt as its motto the phrase: "The Agitation of Thought is the Beginning of Wisdom." Contributions by Frances H. Green, S.J. Finney, L. Sexton, G.B. Rogers, and Emma Tuttle; novels by the likes of Mary B. Willbor ("Violet: A True Story"). On Hannah Frances Brown, an old Universalist and radical and disciple of John Murray Spear, see John R. Buescher, The Other Side of Salvation: Spiritualism and Nineteenth-Century Religious Experience (2004), 154-160, 182-183, 193-194. She was an avowed "free lover" and feminist and was involved with Moses Hull's The Progressive Age and with the Religio-Philosophical Journal, edited The Little Bouquet and The Lyceum Banner, and assisted in The Spiritual Republic. University of Rochester. New York Historical Society, Ohio Historical Society, American Antiquarian Society, Oberlin College.