Mel Lyman: the folk musician who started his own cult

Folk musician Mel Lyman rose from the Boston music scene to lead a commune on Fort Hill in Roxbury, which critics and former observers described as a cult. His relationship with wealthy socialite Jessie Benton helped draw attention to the group, and a later legal dispute over her father’s art revived scrutiny of its history and finances.

Lyman played banjo and harmonica, appeared at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and embraced the counterculture’s use of LSD. By 1971, the community had more than 100 members; a Rolling Stone investigation reported that Lyman controlled members’ daily lives, with punishment for rule-breakers and intimidation of outsiders. Lyman’s newspaper and book set out his radical ideas, while Benton and her children later faced a bank countersuit alleging they sought to defraud it of millions for the group’s benefit.