His Port Huron, Michigan schoolmaster told his mother the lad was just too thick to be educated. She snatched him from school and gave him a love of knowledge. He spent hundreds of hours at the Detroit Public Library while he had a daily seven-hour wait for his return train. Only after he had left for New York, and later New Jersey, did he speak about his investigations into the alleged supernatural. It caused a lot of commotion at the time.
All bibles are man-made.
His shareholders trembled every time he spoke about religion but he refused to be muzzled. His first wife, Mary Stilwell, died of typhoid when he was 38 and he ascribed the cause to Nature, not some god who decided to punch her ticket. He married Mina Miller a few years later and here his agnosticism met with resistance. She was the devout daughter of a Methodist minister who tried to convert him into a Christian. She failed but the marriage survived after he was subjected to 6 Methodist bishops who came to his home to convert him at the request of Mina.