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Monday, December 28, 2015

We need to confirm birth data for this man



William E. Richards

            W. E. Richards was born in Illinois in May 1861 and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church as a youth. By the time he appears on the pages of Zion’s Watch Tower, he lived in Ohio with his wife and children. Writing to Russell in February 1892, he recalled his youthful interest in the Bible and his desire to preach: “From a child I have read the Scriptures, and all other books that I thought or hoped would make plain to my understanding the truth, as I was hungry to know and anxious to teach it.”[1] By the mid-1880s he was “


[1]               “Out of Darkness into his Marvelous Light,” Zion’s Watch Tower, March 1, 1893, page 78.

2 comments:

jerome said...

After searching through Ancestry, the most likely candidate is William Ellsworth Richards, born in Illinois on March 16, 1861. The family had moved to Ohio by the time of the 1870 census. He lived in the Ohio area for the rest of his life, dying on June 17, 1932. Some brief family details can be found on his Find a Grave entry.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=richards&GSfn=william&GSmn=ellsworth&GSbyrel=all&GSdyrel=all&GSob=n&GRid=101813270&df=all&

After his letter referred to in the original post, W E Richards only appears once more in the pages of the Watch Tower up to 1916. In the July 1, 1908 issue he is one of the names who wrote in to say he had taken "the vow".

jerome said...

Richards relocated from Ohio to Butler, PA, in 1916, and wrote up his spiritual life story in the St Paul Enterprise for October 17, 1916. He obviously went back to Ohio later.