Seven

Let me tell you about our Chapter Seven. Maybe you can help.

Entitled "Russell and Barbour: The Fruitage," it profiles the most significant of their "converts" between 1877 and 1878. These are key years. The people we profile were actors, major players. Their role in defining the movement and in its fragmentation is important. Some of them will be new to our readers.

We profile Caleb Davies, a hardware merchant. He named one of his sons after Horatius Bonar and another after John Paton. We have a family photo. We would like to see his private letters, no matter how insignificant. We haven’t located any except for those appearing in Paton’s World’s Hope.

William I. Mann appears next. We have a solid biography. We need a photo. I would like to know something about his education, which seems to have been considerable. We found one group photo of workers at Jones & Laughlin, but we’re uncertain he’s in the photo, and faces are blurred beyond rescue.

Charles W. and Emma P. Buvinger are next. Their grandson provided us with good documentation and two really nice photos. There are pages from a Civil War diary out there somewhere. They may not be useful, but we don’t know.

Next in order is Joshua Tavender, a soap and candle maker from Utica, New York. We have a line drawing portrait. We’d like an actual photo, and almost anything else would be useful. We have everything from the Utica newspapers. No need to send articles from them.

J. C Sunderlin is next. We have a good, solid biography. There are a few Civil War letters out on the lose. We own two originals and have copies of two more. We have his compound oxygen letter. We have a good photo, and what is probably a photo of his first wife. (We’d like to verify that). We would like to know where he was educated for the Methodist ministry.

A. P. Adams follows. We have his photo, an original taken by Sunderlin. We haven’t scanned it yet. But we have it. Thanks to a blog reader who took time out of a busy trip to Boston, we have the Methodist archival papers. There is probably nothing additional we need for this chapter. We need his small book, Bible Theology. We have Bible Harmony, and don’t need that. We have the first year of his magazine, Spirit of the Word. We have no other issues, though it was published up to and probably past 1907. It had a very small circulation, mostly local to the Boston area. Any issue would help.