The Biographies

            I’ve been posting many brief biographies; I should probably explain why we’re pursuing these. The current mythology that passes for history suggests that early believers were all poor, disenfranchised, marginally educated, and probably Adventists of some sort. The early influence of Zion’s Watch Tower is also questioned, even by its friends. The best way for us to analyze this is to examine the issue in detail.

            So ... we’re examining all the newspaper articles and letters to Russell we can find. If we can put a name to a letter, so much the better. But even the anonymous letters have detail. They tell us what the writer’s previous religion was. (Often Methodist; almost never Adventist.) The biographical details, minor though they seem, tell a better, more accurate story than the myth that floats around the Internet.