Nettie Colburn Maynard was born in Bolton, Connecticut, in 1841. As a teenage girl in the winter of 1862, she visited Washington to see her brother in the Federal Army hospital. While in the capital, she went to a séance that Lincoln also attended. During the séance, she went into spontaneous trance and lectured the President on the necessity for emancipation of the slaves. She spoke to him for almost an hour.
Later, Nettie Colburn gave many séances for Lincoln and gave messages concerning the welfare of the nation, especially concerning the Civil War. She wrote a book, Was Abraham Lincoln a Spiritualist? published in 1891.