by Jerome
This article is expanded from material that first
appeared on Blog 2. Its main purpose is to show photographs of headstones for
people connected with the history covered in this blog. I have received
permission from all the necessary contributors on the Find a Grave site to
reproduce their work here. So my grateful thanks go to Sherry, Doug, Shiver,
MrsJB, JennO, Duane, blt, Neil, Chris, Mojo, Joann, Kathie and Beverley. In some
cases the pictures used here are alternatives to those currently found on the
site, simply because I didn’t need permission to use my own photographs.
This means that you can probably assume it is OK to copy
these pictures for non-commercial use if you so choose. However, I would always
recommend going back to the original source on Find a Grave as some pages contain
further information on the individuals. And this is not static – new material
is being added all the time to this resource. What wasn’t there for me to
discover today could just be there for you to discover tomorrow.
In addition, it is worth noting that there are a number
of individuals connected with Watch Tower history who do not have headstones,
but nonetheless have pages devoted to them on the Find a Grave site. For
example, John Corbin Sunderlin has an entry, but there is no photograph of a
headstone on the page (as yet). Nonetheless, you CAN find headstones along with
biographical information for both his father and his son. However, in this
article, apart from a couple of paragraphs on the Staten Island Cemetery where no
grave markers exist as a matter of policy (see below), these have not been
covered. This article is, after all, about pictures. But I recommend that you still
type in your name of choice and check.
Before we actually get to the pictures, perhaps I can
illustrate the value of this resource with one current example. In researching
Henry Weber for a recent article, a letter was found in ZWT from 1901 written
by Edna Mary Hammond which stated that her introduction to Bible Student
publications was through her brother’s Sunday school teacher. This was Henry
Weber. Edna is very specific; she was 10 years old at the time. Find a Grave
finds – not just Henry Weber, but also Edna Mary. We know from her entry that
she was born in 1873 and also where she was born. Do the math and we know that
Henry was already circulating CTR’s publications in 1883. We also know from
Edna’s entry and the surrounding family entries that her sister died as a
Jehovah’s Witness. So we have the right name, the right family, the right place
and right religious connections. All of this to give us an earlier date than
previously known for Henry Weber’s Watch Tower connections.
The Russell family
Charles Taze Russell
Front row - markers for CTR's father, mother, and three siblings
Back row - markers for Uncle Charles, Uncle James, and Aunt Sarah
Father - Joseph L Russell
The in-laws - Mahlon and Selena Ackley
The wife - Maria F Russell
The sister-in-law and step-mother - Emma H Russell
Before the Watch Tower
Henry Grew
(No grave marker known, but this is his death certificate)
Benjamin Wilson
Jonas Wendell
George Stetson
George Storrs
Barbour family memorial
Nelson H Barbour
Some of those who went their own way
Conley family memorial
William H Conley
"Our Pet" - Conley's adopted daughter who died aged 10 in 1881
John H Paton
Hugh B Rice
Arthur P Adams
Otto von Zech
Ernest C Henninges
(wife Rose Ball is buried here too but the headstone was never updated)
Post CTR
Nathan H Knorr and Frederick W Franz
Later years
As previous articles on this blog have detailed, the
Society had its own burial ground at the Rosemont United Cemeteries in Ross
Township, Pittsburgh. Here CTR and a few Bethel family members and Pilgrims
were buried, and their names inscribed on a pyramid monument. For biographical
details of all these individuals please see articles on this blog Who Are Those
Guys? Parts 1 and 2 from September 2014.
However, shortly after the headquarters moved from
Pittsburgh to Brooklyn for the second time in 1919, this cemetery was to all
intents and purposes abandoned. It was only several decades later that the
remaining graves were sold off. See article A Short History of United
Cemeteries, also from September 2014.
It made more sense to have a cemetery for Bethel family
workers in New York where they were now headquartered. To replace the
Pittsburgh plot, a new cemetery was created on Staten Island, New York. In 1922
the Society bought 24 acres of land in Woodrow Road, Staten Island. The area is
sometimes known as Rossville and also Huguenot Park. The purpose was to build
their own radio station WBBR which started broadcasting in early 1924. There
was also some farming done on the land, in what was then very much a rural
area.
A new graveyard was established nearby in the same
street, alongside an historic landmark, the Woodrow United Methodist Church. The website NYC AM Radio
History when discussing station WBBR made the statement:
Judge Rutherford died in 1942 and was buried at
Rossville in a Methodist cemetery within sight of the WBBR towers.
This small burial plot was used until at least the late
1960s. There are various references to this cemetery in the Society’s
literature when the death of someone well-known from their headquarters staff
was announced. For example, the Awake for February 22, 1952 page 26 recounts
the funeral of Clayton J Woodworth, along with two other Bethel workers in a
triple interment. The article reads (in part):
On Staten
Island in New York City the Watchtower Society maintains a place of burial for
members of the headquarters staff known as the Bethel family. How appropriate
it is that the remains of these men who labored together during their lifetime,
Rutherford, Van Amburgh, Martin and Woodworth, should be buried there together!
These four had all been imprisoned together way back in
1918.
The Woodrow Road graveyard was accessible to the
general public. It was obviously the policy to have no grave markers. It is
reported that today you can recognise the area belonging to the Society simply
because it is the only section in the cemetery without headstones.
In the 1960s the Society purchased two properties at
Wallkill, Ulster County, about 100 miles north of Brooklyn, NY, totalling a
reported 1200 hectares (around 3000 acres). These became known as Watchtower
Farms, and extensive printing operations were transferred to this area from the
early 1970s onwards. A new graveyard was created on this property that is known
as the Watchtower Farms Cemetery. It is a private cemetery on private land and is
therefore not accessible to the general public. The custom is now to have small
grave markers put down as depicted above for Nathan Knorr and Frederick Franz.
Watchtower Farms cemetery
Very few of those buried at Wallkill have photographs
on Find a Grave. However, you can still check names. Currently the site lists 164
graves. Be warned that this list is not complete,
and is not error free. For example, it lists the grave of A H MacMillan as
being at Wallkill, whereas the Watchtower for 1966, page 608, clearly shows
that he was buried at Staten Island. The same would be true of Giovanni DeCecca
who died in 1965. These two, also imprisoned together
back in 1918, were probably among the last to be interred at Woodrow Road.
In conclusion, it is acknowledged that this article
does not directly add much to our knowledge of Watch Tower history as such, but
is designed to highlight a resource that the author has found extremely useful
in recent years. The more who use it, the more it will grow, and the more
useful it can be for future researchers.
