Hillside Cemetery is the final resting place of Morris Pratt, the Whitewater businessman and farmer who became one of Wisconsin’s most prominent 19th-century Spiritualists. Born in New York in 1820, Pratt moved to Wisconsin with his family in 1840 and eventually became deeply involved in Spiritualism, attending circles and séances associated with Wisconsin medium Mary Hayes-Chynoweth. In the 1880s, Pratt reportedly followed investment advice he received through Hayes-Chynoweth’s spiritual work and made a substantial fortune from northern Wisconsin iron-ore lands. He had promised that if he became wealthy, he would use his money to promote Spiritualism, and he kept that promise.
In 1888, Pratt began construction of a large three-story brick building at what is now the corner of Center and Fremont streets. Opened in 1889 as the Temple of Science, it provided a place for Spiritualist lectures, meetings, circles and séances. Locals weren’t always impressed, calling it “Pratt’s Folly” and the “Spook Temple.” After Pratt’s death in 1902, the building became the Morris Pratt Institute, a formal school offering both general education and Spiritualist subjects including psychic research and mediumship.
The institute continued operating in Whitewater into the 1930s before eventually moving to the Milwaukee area. The original building was demolished in 1961, but Pratt’s grave remains at Hillside Cemetery, tying one of Whitewater’s most tangible historic sites to the movement that helped give the city its enduring reputation for ghosts, witches and the unexplained.
