James Caleb Jackson thought a lot about why women should wear bloomers. He thought about breakfast cereal, too. But these thoughts didn’t consume him until later in his life. As a young farmer, no one suspected — least of all Jackson himself — that he would end up building the largest health spa in the United States.
James Caleb Jackson was born in 1811 a few miles east of Syracuse. He married at 19 and became a farmer and an active abolitionist, managing several abolitionist newspapers. Over time he became acquainted with the movement’s most prominent personalities, such as Fredrick Douglass.
Jackson had suffered ill health most of his life, and decided to try hydrotherapy, the “water cure.” “Taking the waters” had been a medical practice for more than a century. The idea was that sitting in the swirling waters of a mineral spring would cure most ills, or at least ameliorate them. The water cure worked so well for Jackson, he became a lifelong advocate. He left publishing in 1847 and at age 36 enrolled in medical school.
Upon graduation in 1850, he was briefly employed at several different spas. In 1854 he arrived in Dansville, New York, where a spa had been founded five years before but was now rapidly declining.
Jackson took over. His vision and energy quickly turned the spa’s fortunes around. A huge building was constructed to house visitors. (In 1883 the building burned down, and an even larger one replaced it.) Jackson named the spa “Our Home on the Hillside,” and the famous and influential soon streamed in. Visitors included Frederick Douglass and Clara Barton.
At the time, mineral spas were a popular vacation destination, tailored for specific purposes such as diet or rest. Jackson’s innovation was what we would now call a holistic approach. There was more to preventing or curing disease than just sitting in water, he claimed. Clean, healthy living needed to be combined with the hydrotherapy. Jackson banned tobacco, alcohol, and red meat, and prescribed fresh water, clean air, whole grains, lots of sunshine, dancing, and regular exercise. For $5, he would give patrons a complete medical exam with recommendations to improve their health.
Jackson fervently believed the youth of the country were rotting its greatness with masturbation. He even included a list of symptoms parents should watch for in the daughters’ behavior that might signal “self abuse.” He believed mothers had an electrical connection with their children that could influence them for good or bad.
Exercise for women puzzled Jackson. Meaningful exercise in a hoop skirt or a dress with up to 13 petticoats was impossible. Women needed a garment allowing as much free of movement as men. Jackson commissioned Dr. Harriet Austin, his business partner in charge of treating women at the spa, to design what she called “the American Costume” for women, which featured a mid-length skirt worn over pants. Outfits and sewing patterns for them were sold at the spa.
(While Amelia Bloomer did not invent the outfit, she inadvertently lent her name to it. As the editor of the progressive women’s magazine The Lily, she published Austin’s patterns and instructions on how to make the American Costume. At her speaking tours, Bloomer wore the style, which the public started to call bloomers.)
As part of his healthy living cure, Jackson was interested in creating a meatless breakfast option. Jackson mashed graham flour and water into large sheets and baked it in the oven. Once cool, the sheets were pounded into tiny bits and boxed for sale. (They were similar to today’s Grape-Nuts.) Jackson called his cereal granula. In the 1870s, Henry Kellog tried to market a somewhat similar cereal also called granula. After the threat of legal action, Kellogg changed the name of his product to granola.
Jackson later became involved in another legal dispute. The co-founder and visionary of the Seventh Day Adventists, Ellen White, wrote a series of health manuals for members of her sect following a visit to the spa. Afterwards, accusations arose that White had plagiarized Jackson’s books. White denied it, but the dispute was never settled to everybody’s satisfaction.
While the popularity of the spa grew, Jackson stayed busy, writing six books on health, as well as numerous pamphlets. Topics included The Sexual Organism and Its Healthful Management, Dancing: Its Evils and Benefits, and How to Treat the Sick Without Medicine.
Jackson died in 1895 at age 84. Eventually, as medical knowledge advanced, fewer people came to Jackson’s spa, now run by his son and daughter. It closed in 1913. After attempts to repurpose it as an army hospital and then a health club, among other ventures, Our Home on the Hillside was abandoned in 1972.
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Comments
James Caleb Jackson was way ahead of his time in his quest for making America healthy again with the Jackson Sanatorium and later “Our Home on the Hillside” in addition to his health consciousness raising efforts otherwise in the 19th century.
I’m also unhappy to read his historic building has been sitting abandoned since 1972. Fortunately it has not seen the wrecking ball, and I hope it never does. I don’t know what efforts preservationists of the area have or haven’t done, but it should be saved. Perhaps over the past 53 years efforts to save it have been done which is why it’s still there, waiting for the right people to come along. I’d like to think so.
Why is this historic building sitting abandoned and not being preserved? This is so sad when many historic buildings such as this are never repurposed and eventually face a wrecking ball.