SECT LEADER DIES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22622, 27 April 1948, Page 5

SECT LEADER DIES

“PROPHET ELIJAH” FOUNDER OF "KINGDOM” NEW YORK, April 25. Frank Weston Candford, aged 86, bearded cultist who wore purple robes and claimed to be the prophet Elijah and turned a two-cent investment into a 1,000,000 dollar religious home, has died, according to reports from Durham, Maine. His associates refuse to say where or when he was buried. Sandford, after graduating from Bates College, founded The Kingdom, Incorporated. The sect attracted followers by thousands and though started with only two cents, soon acquired a 4000acre tract at Durham on which a religious home was built. I The sect achieved world-wide publicity through Sandford’s prophecy that the world would end in 1907. . His followers remained faithful despite this slight miscalculation and in 1908 Sandford led a crusade aboard the yacht Coronet which ended in disaster and the death of eight passengers from scurvy off the West African coast. It also resulted in the Federal Court sentencing Sandford to seven years' imprisonment. He retired and disappeared in 1919 but the Durham retreat was maintained.