Charles Taze Russell's Private Secretaries

by Bernhard

(edited by Jerome)

RUSSELL, MARIA FRANCES

December 1884 – November 1897

When Charles T. Russell became president of Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society, on December 15, 1884, his wife Maria Frances became secretary and treasurer. In general, she was his secretary, who proofread his manuscripts and did the usual work of an office assistant. On some chapters in the Millennial Dawn series she co-labored with Charles in arranging them in final form and especially so for volume IV, which consisted largely of quotations from newspaper clippings which they had selected for some years. In evaluating the true function of Maria, it appears that she acted in the capacity of special assistant to Charles as his loyal wife. She was studious, college trained, and capable in her own right. No doubt Charles utilized her talents to the fullest, not only in secretarial functions, but in acting as organizer and arranger of his manuscript notes.

When Maria separated from Charles in November 1897, he needed another secretary, and this was Ernest C. Henninges.

HENNINGES, ERNEST CHARLES

November 1897 – April 1900

Ernest was born on July 12, 1871 in Cuyahoga (Cleveland) Ohio and died on February 3, 1939 in Victoria, Australia. His father Emil Henninges (1828 – 1892) came from Germany. His mother Kate was born 1840 in Ohio. He had one brother George (born 1858). Ernest’s profession was teaching music in Cleveland at 44 Euclid Avenue.

After he joined the Bible Students he moved to Allegheny in 1891 to work and live in the Bible House. On January 4, 1896, he replaced James Augustus Weimar as a director of the Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society and in May 13, 1898, 6 months after Maria left the Bible House, Ernest succeeded her as secretary-treasurer. Russell trusted him a lot.

In the Bible House also lived Rose Ball, the foster child of Charles T. and Maria Russell. On September 11, 1897, Ernest and Rose were married at Buffalo, Erie, New York, where her parents Richard J. Ball and Elizabeth Ball still lived. 

At the beginning of 1900, Russell planned to send Ernest and Rose Henninges to England to open an office for the Society. So it was clear that another brother needed to become secretary-treasurer, and this was Otto Albert Koetitz on February 12, 1900, and also another brother, Albert E. Williamson, became Russell’s private secretary. Ernest remained a director. 

In April 1900 Ernest and Rose travelled to Liverpool and then to London, where they opened on April 23, the first office outside the United States,  at 131 Gipsy Lane, Forest Gate. They stayed there until November 1, 1901, and then came back to Allegheny. Ernest again became treasurer of the Society on February 12, 1902 and remained such until March 24, 1903. On that date William Van Amburgh became treasurer. In March 1903 Ernest and Rose travelled to Elberfeld (Wuppertal), Germany, and again opened an office for the Society in June 1903. They stayed there until October and then went to Melbourne, Australia, arriving on January 10, 1904.

In 1908 some internal troubles surfaced. James Hezekiah Giesey, Watch Tower vice-president and well-known Pittsburgh architect, along with long time director Simon Osborne Blunden, resigned as Society directors in June. Albert Williamson followed in September. Henninges also resigned as a director in January 1909, and he and his wife left Russell and the Bible Students in the spring of 1909. Henninges founded a new group and journal called “New Covenant Advocate” in Australia and those in America like Giesey, Williamson, along with hymn writer M.L. Mc Phail, formed a similar breakaway group.

WILLIAMSON, ALBERT EDMUND

 April 1900 – September 1908

Albert Williamson was born on February 13, 1878 in Oneida Township, Haldimand, Balloville, Ontario, Canada. He was the son of James and Elizabeth Bayly (born 1839) and he had a twin brother Frederik William and also a sister Annie. Albert married Hattie (Harriet) Stark (born Allegheny, December 1879) a member of the Bible House family on December 5, 1905. She lived there with her mother Britee C. Stark.  Albert and Harriet had three daughters Dorothy Eleanor (September 9, 1911), Elizabeth K. (1916) and Edith Anna (1920).

He became a member of the Bible House staff in 1899, along with his mother, and later, in 1905, his brother Fred. On February 12, 1900 he became a Watch Tower Society director. He resigned on September 28, 1908. Interesting is that his twin brother Frederick William replaced him as a Society director for one year.

When Ernest C. Henninges travelled to England in April 1900, Albert Edmund Williamson replaced him as Russell‘s private secretary.

The "Crittenden Record, Kentucky“, for February 8, 1907, contained a report about a talk Williamson gave.  Under the heading: THE END OF THE WORLD IS NEAR AT HAND it explained: “October 1914 is the date set for the end to come. The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Alleghany, Penn., through Mr. A. Edmund Williamson, announce the above date to be the beginning of the millennium. Mr. Williamson, who is secretary to Charles T. Russell, head of the society, did not, however, announce that there would be a general conflagration of the earth and an incineration of all the wicked on that date, but rather a "great change.""

Williamson was a very eloquent speaker, but more important was his skill as a stenographer. Russell wrote about him (Souvenir Convention Report from 1908):  "In my publishing office we have ten stenoographers, but only one of them could serve in such an emergency—Mr. Williamson—and he consented to assist also. So far as I know none of these gentlemen expect or have received pay for the service, and only Mr. Williamson even has his expenses provided.“  Also in 1908 Russell wrote that he received about 500 letters every Monday and the rest of the week from 250 to 300 a day. So there was a lot of work for him and his secretary.

Sadly in late 1908 Williamson decided to leave the Bible House, but not only the house, he also split from Russell in early 1909. He died in March 1956, when he lived in Essex, West Orange, New Jersey.

ROBISON, FREDERI(C)K HOMER Prof.

 September 1908 – 1914 (?)

Much of Robison‘s history comes from Robison’s obituary in the Concordant Version magazine “Unsearchable Riches“ in 1932, because he was to leave association with the IBSA in 1922. He was born on February 3, 1885 in Greenwood, Indiana and died April 17, 1932 in Manhattan, New York. He was the only son of James A. Robison (1859-1949) and Eva J. Whitenack (1862-1955), of Oakland, California. He had two sisters named Bartha B. and May E. It was there that he spent his youth, graduating from high school at the age of fourteen. It was about this time that he affiliated with the Disciples of Christ. He entered Franklin College to continue his education and there further displayed an aptitude for languages in the study of New Testament Greek.

Later he went to Canada and took out a claim in the Rainy River district of Ontario. He resided there about one year, teaching part time and part time employed in the immigration service. He returned to Indiana in 1904 and entered Butler College in Indianapolis, remaining there until the opening of Winona Technical Institute, also in Indianapolis, and enrolled there as a student of lithography that he might be equipped not only for his present need, but to have the knowledge of a trade, for use in the missionary field. It was his purpose to carry the gospel to Japan independently.

With a year's instruction at the John Herrin Art Institute in Indianapolis and some knowledge of chemistry to his credit, he made splendid progress and in less than two years accepted a position as poster artist in one of the largest lithographing houses in the United States, located at Cleveland, Ohio. He became one of their foremen in charge of artists. It was while in this position that he pursued the reading of Pastor Russell's works, having become slightly interested during his sojourn in Canada. During all this time his linguistic talents were being exercised more or less in the attainment of a knowledge of Spanish, French and German, as well as New Testament Greek. After reading Pastor Russell's works, he employed a Japanese friend to translate some of the literature into Japanese, still thinking of the foreign mission field, but later abandoned this to become a home missionary, as a colporteur for Pastor Russell's works.

After about one year in this new field of endeavor, he prepared for secretarial service and was called to the Bible House in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. It was there that he met Miss Almeta Nation, whom he married on March 25, 1909. He became private secretary to Pastor Russell and held that position until after the Society's offices were transferred to Brooklyn, New York, in 1909. As private secretary to Pastor Russell he accompanied him on a trip around the world (December 1911 – March 1912) with a committee sent to investigate foreign missions. Japan was one of the places visited.

On his return, Robison became secretary of the foreign work and he had a good opportunity for pursuing the study of languages. His obituary stated that he could translate twenty-three in all, giving discourses in German, Greek, and English. He made week-end pilgrimages in and about New York City, addressing both public and private gatherings.

Robison was one of four men designated in Russell‘s will to be co-editors of the Watch Tower. Apart from when imprisoned with J F Rutherford and others in 1918-1919, he was one of the Watch Tower’s editorial committee until the spring of 1922 when he resigned and went to Washington, D. C., to accept secular work as a commercial artist in the art department of the Washington Post. He afterwards served the government and later became art director for the American Automobile Association, with headquarters in Washington, D. C. He returned to work in New York in 1931, and died on April 17, 1932.

When the first installment of the literal Bible translation “The Concordant Version” was issued it came to the attention of the Society’s headquarters. As the plates of the Emphatic Diaglott were worn out, they were looking for something to replace it, and Robison was delegated to call on the Concordant Publishing Concern in Los Angeles with a view to placing it on the Society's list of literature. A small booklet of the Concordant translation of Revelation was advertised in the Watch Tower for June 15, 1920, but then was dropped in early 1921.

The contact with the Concordant version group, who were Universalists, led to Robison leaving association with the IBSA, resigning from the Watch Tower editorial committee and as an elder of the New York congregation. He spent the rest of the 1920s supporting the Concordant cause and trying to attract his former IBSA associates to it. (For a fuller description of what happened and how the Watch Tower Society dealt with it, use the search facility to see an old article on this blog: The Watchtower and Universalism – the Almont Connection.)

STURGEON, MENTA

 1914 (?) – October 1916

Menta Sturgeon was born 1866/67 in Missouri and died on April 17, 1935. He married Florence A. (born 1871 in Massachusetts) in 1888 and they had one son Gordon (born 1899).

Sturgeon graduated from the Theological Seminary of the Southern Baptist Church and studied Greek and Hebrew. In the late 1880s, he worked for the Kansas & Texas Coal Company, and lived at 4001 N. B 'Way, St. Louis, Missouri. In March 1897 the members of his church unanimously appointed him a pastor, a position he assumed until his resignation in 1904. He was reverend of a Baptist Church in the city, the Tower Grove Baptist Church, located at 4320 avenue. However, he left the church after internal dissension.

He came into contact with Russell's teachings in 1894 through a small book handed to him by his physician, but it was only 14 years later that he attended his teaching when he attended readings Biblical records given by the pastor at Arch Street: first as a simple listener, then as the pastor's interlocutor. In the meantime, he preached independently, and then added his own disciples to Russell's group. Finally, he received a letter from the pastor asking him if he could become a lecturer for him, which Sturgeon accepted, and so in 1909 he left the society in which he worked; apparently it was the Blackmer & Post Pipe Company.

He was a member of the Saint Louis Ecclesia. As a pilgrim, from 1909-1914 he visited  central and eastern states of the United States, as well as various provinces of Canada. He was a capable speaker. He came to work at the Watch Tower headquarters around 1910, where he first worked on general supervision and then conducted Bible classes and religious services.

In addition to being Russell's secretary, Sturgeon was also responsible for helping the latter in his medical treatments. He was the last of the Bible Students to see Russell alive. On Russell’s last tour, he had to replace him at times in Los Angeles, and was with him when he died on the train on the return journey to Brooklyn. Sturgeon reported in detail the last days of his life in the Watch Tower publications.

In the split that followed Rutherford’s election as president, Sturgeon supported the four dismissed directors, and was put forward as an alternative choice as president. In the subseqent referendum comparatively few voted for him.

Sturgeon was to leave both the Watch Tower Society and the alternative Bible Student groups, to join Fredrik Robison in supporting the Concordant Publishing Concern. He died on August 17, 1935 and the group’s magazine published an obituary from which some of the above has been taken.