User:Elton.witt/Earl Tracy

Earl Tracy (November 7, 1886 – December 25, 1945) was a controversial "faith healer" whose Cokato, Minnesota home was a "mecca" for afflicted Americans looking to be cured of their ills. Tracy did not profess Christianity as the source of his power, but did use prayer and the laying on of hands. He claimed his chief aim in life was to "spread sunshine."

Biographical Information
When younger, Earl was a proprietor of a saloon in North Dakota serving bootleg to Native Americans. Earl found his gift in the trenches of World War I. Sometime during his second or third marriage (Tracy was married four or five times) he hooked up with an ex-Episcopalian Priest, E.G. Erickson, and held a “Spiritual Clinic” at St. Bartholomew’s Swedish Church in New York City. In 1921, Earl left New York for a whirlwind tour of Europe, where he was invited to treat the Swedish Royal Family. A woman friend of the court had claimed Tracy has healed her.

Returning to America, he swept through most of the country, ending up in Chicago – wealthy and well connected. He helped police solve cases, started a playground equipment company, and lived high on the town. He made a fortune and lost it. [Rumors of ties to Chicago gangsters] In the early 1930s, during the height of his high-rolling days in Chicago, Earl received word that his father, John Tracy, was dying. He returned to Cokato to take care of his mother, setting up his healing business in his sprawling home, which still stands. As word spread, he would see one hundred or more people each day, working twelve to fourteen hours at a stretch, in practice of his strange “power”. [Ref: Minnesota paper clipping] He kept a collection of thousands of letters from folks who claimed of their healing. Lived in Cokato for the last five years until he died of pneumonia.