Reuben Briggs Davenport

Reuben Briggs Davenport was an American writer active in the late 19th century, and records available online place his life from about 1852 to 1932. He is best remembered for The Death-Blow to Spiritualism (1888), a book published in New York that presented the Fox sisters' story as an exposure of fraudulent spirit phenomena.

That book sits at the center of his reputation today. Library of Congress and Internet Archive records confirm the title, date, and subject, showing that he wrote about Margaret Fox Kane and Catherine Fox Jencken at a moment when public interest in Spiritualism was especially intense. The tone of the work is openly combative and skeptical, which gives it much of its historical interest now.

Some later sources also connect Davenport with journalism, and one university-hosted historical text credits him with reporting on the Battle of Rosebud Creek for the New York Herald in 1876. Because biographical details beyond his authorship are not consistently documented in the sources I could confirm, it is safest to remember him primarily as the author of a notable anti-Spiritualist work that has outlived its moment as a piece of firsthand controversy.