George W. Higgins

Who is George W. Higgins?

George W. Higgins was an American minister of the Holy Ghost and Us Society. He was probably the last person in New England to be subjected to the traditional mob-led humiliations of tarring and feathering and riding the rail. The incident occurred in Levant, Maine, just outside Bangor in 1899, and resulted in the trial of 29 members of a mob numbering about 150 persons.

Higgins was from Calais, Maine. The Holy Ghost and Us Society was a millenarian religious sect founded by Frank Sandford, and headquartered at Shiloh Temple in Durham, Maine. Sandford encouraged his followers to donate all their property to the church and live communally at Shiloh. As a missionary for the Society, Higgins had made about 15 converts in the town of Levant, including some prosperous farmers who had been induced to give up their property to the church. Known locally as 'Higginsites', the sect was blamed by townspeople for the suicide of an elderly blind woman who was one of its members, and for administering a beating to a child whom Higgins had claimed was possessed by a demon.

Two of Levant's selectmen asked Higgins to leave town, which he refused to do.