Photodrama films

(reprinted)

Those who love the Photodrama of Creation will recognize these frames from the end of the sequence on the flood, with the tinted sequence of the ark that ends with the rainbow appearing.

After the footage was meticulously copied frame by frame, the key nitrate stock in private hands was donated to the George Eastman museum as they have the professional facilities for its preservation.

Also the following document has come to light from the time which details the order and contents of all the slides and moving pictures from the production.

Interestingly it is dated November 17, 1914, and stresses that this revised schedule should be followed “implicitly.” Although the Photodrama started life as a three parter for a very short time, it had been shown in four parts for most of 1914. The extra part was not so much adding extra material as making each performance of a more manageable length for audiences of the day. But one wonders what changes were deemed necessary by November of that year.

Away

I'll be away from my blog until Tuesday, December 3, 2019. If you email me, expect a delay before I can answer.

Some you win... Some you - don't...

This is a brief tale of a search that in some ways led to disappointment. Being based in the UK I was asked if I could find the last resting place of the Edgar family. As well as their speciality of pyramidology three of the Edgars, John, Morton and Minna (two brothers and a sister) also wrote a series of little booklets. One of them by John “Where Are The Dead?” was instrumental in attracting the interest of a young man named Fred Franz before the First World War.

We knew from printed accounts that they were buried in a family plot in the Eastwood Cemetery, Glasgow. There are two cemeteries of this name, an Old and a New, but the date of the first interment identified the site as being in the Old.

Were there memorial headstones? Would there even be a pyramid? That is not as fanciful as it sounds. Here is the grave for Piazzi Smyth.

And here from a Bible Student publication is a grave marker in Yeovil, Somerset, for a Bible Student, William Hallett, who died in 1921.

The cemetery records in Glasgow had not been transcribed, let alone posted on the internet. But I was able to make contact with a Family History Society in Glasgow and a member very kindly did a search for me. Almost immediately the burial registers for the family were found.

John bought three adjoining plots and later a fourth was added, totalling plots numbered A-950-953. Sixteen members of the extended family were eventually buried here. The last interment was in 1968. Any modern generations of the family, if they still exist, obviously moved elsewhere.

The next step was a visit to the area and again a willing volunteer from the area visited the site and took the following photograph. The graves numbered A-950-953 are both sides of the tree in the foreground. One wonders what size the tree was when these plots were sold originally.

There are a few memorials standing, which at least enable one to fix the correct site, but alas, none for the Edgar family. In UK cemeteries vandalism and sheep with itchy bottoms have eliminated a lot of memorials, but it would appear from the photographs that the Edgars never did have a lasting memorial installed.

Realistically, had there been anything like a pyramid there, it would have been found and publicised long before now.

So this is a non-story really. But you never know until you follow everything up what may or may not be discovered.

If I remember right ...

This first appeared in the 1948 song book.

Catholic Opposition

I need examples of Catholic opposition to Russell 1916 and before. Anyone?

This statement from Keith appeared in November 1882

I will appreciate thoughtful comments on this.

A Townman’s Teaching.

            Editor Advertiser: In complying with a request for a synopsis of what I am teaching, I shall necessarily have to be so brief as to only give some of the principal features; and take the risk of being misunderstood and misrepresented, though not more so than at present, perhaps. But I will say first that I do not believe that this earth will be purified by a literal fire, and all but an insignificant portion of the people destroyed.

            I do believe that the God is dealing with the race according to a prearranged system, called the purpose or plan of the ages – Eph. 3:11; Heb. 1:2, 11:3. Rev. Ver. N. Y. margin, and that there are yet ages to come, during which God will show to the world the riches of his favor, in kindness toward us, in raising us up to sit with or reign with Christ – Eph. 2:6, 7.

            I believe, in common with thousands of others, that there are many indubitable evidences that we are now in the ending of the gospel age, and that the period of transition or lap of something over thirty years, will be marked by great revolutions, political, social and religious.

            In other words, it is the “day of the Lord” so often referred to in both old and new testaments, and in such a way that many have thought and still think there would be a great conflagration – 2 Pet. 3:10.

            The length of the past ages, and this transition period, is shown by the chronology and time measurements found in the bible. The frequent misapplication of those measurements, which have caused many to look for a burning time, does not prove that there may not be a right application, in harmony with God’s great application, in harmony with God’s great system of the ages. The fact that they are in the bible is a sufficient argument for their importance, and that the wise would understand them in due time. One of the intensely interesting features of the time, is the Jewish question, which is already attracting the attention of the civilized world, and, because of being the fulfillment of so large an amount of prophecy, and at the exact time given, it will be a powerful argument against the increasing infidelity of our day.

            Many who now scoff, will see the importance of the subject in a few years.

            I believe that the position taken by three general classes of religionists are based on scriptures, and, though contradictory, as advocated, will be seen to be beautifully harmonious in time; and it is being shown even now. Many are learning every year. I refer to Calvinism or election; arminianism or “free grace” and universalism. While based on scripture, the advocates of each line of thought must be more or less wrong in their conclusions, because of not seeing the force of the other two, and not rightly applying. The three classes of scripture can not be true in one age.

            God’s promise and oath in regard to the development of a Seed, and the work to be done by the Seed, after development, must be the basis of right application, and consequent harmony.

            The promise first appears as a threat to the serpent, to bruise his head – Gen. 3:15; it was ratified with Abraham oath, saying: In thy Seed shall all the nations be blesses – Gen. 22:15, 18.

            Paul says that Seed is Christ and those who are Christs chosen in the gospel age – Gal. 3:16, 29.

            The elect are represented as the body of Christ, and called Christ – Rom. 12:4, 5;  1 Cor. 12:12; and they are called the children of promise – Gal. 4:28, 6, 7, 9.

            God has been electing a few, not to torment nor annihilate the many; but because he will ultimately justify the nations through faith – Gal. 3:8, Acts 15:14, In his wisdom he permitted evil for man’s development, and he will bring good out of it – 1 Cor. 1:21.

            The Seed, then, means the “head and body” united, glorified together, as the Christ of Scripture; and God has chosen this Seed as the mediator between God and men – the nations – to give them the truth in due time – 1 Tim. 2:4, 6; and to reconcile the world to himself – 2 Cor. 5:19.

            God has sworn by himself that every knee should bow, and every tongue confess – Is. 45:20, 23. Paul says every knee and tongue means: those in heaven – angels; those on earth and under the earth; under ground ones, and they will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father – Phil 2:10, 11. This work of the Seed belongs to the times of restitution or ages to come – Acts 3:19.

            I have tried to state as briefly as possible, some of the principal lines of thought which I am teaching; and have given a few of the many passages of scripture which support them. All who will try to understand them, will see that election, as taught in the Bible, is true and beautiful; God’s favor is free; and in due time will be manifested to all his creatures.

B. W. Keith

Becoming more urgent

There are many anti-Russell tracts and booklets in British libraries to which I have no access. My research will benefit from copies. Can you help?

G. Andrae

I need what biographical information there is on a G. Andrae, a physician living in Steglitz, a Borough of Berlin in the 1920s.

Separate Identity - Review

You can leave a review, hopefully a favorable one, here - https://www.worldcat.org/title/separate-identity-organizational-identity-among-readers-of-zions-watch-tower-1870-1887-vol-1/oclc/935786358&referer=brief_results#reviews

Interesting Article

Not about the era we consider on this blog but interesting. I do not have permission to reproduce it, so I give it to you through a link:

https://www.heraldcourier.com/news/pieces-of-the-past-protests-over-jehovah-s-witnesses-turned/article_6cf74d01-1385-5151-bb72-31790f5b9994.html

Contact Card

(reprinted)

The above contact card was for Mrs M A Boder. Mary Ann Dunbar (1860-1948) was from Scots-Irish background and married William F Boder in Allegheny in 1889. They had one son, William Dunbar Boder (1891-1980).

Mary is mentioned once in ZWT in the issue for August 15, 1908.  She signed a document giving support to “the vow” as part of the Avalon class (Avalon, Allegheny, Penn.)  The document was also signed by W D Boder. This was not her husband but her son who would be about 17 years old at the time.

Mary remained with the IBSA and her funeral announcement in 1948 mentioned Jehovah’s Witnesses. From the Pittsburgh-Sun Telegraph, March 7,1948, page 33.

I do not know her son’s subsequent religious history other than that he claimed exemption on his WW1 Draft card on the grounds of being a member of the International Bible Students. From a document dated June 5, 1917.

The Daily Pittsburgh Gazette, December 31, 1855

Der liberale Beobachter und Berks, Montgomery und Schuylkill Caunties allgemeine anzeiger, August 22, 1843.

The second Mrs A D Jones

Republished from elsewhere with permission. Trivia perhaps, but fun. I understand that Bruce is carrying on further research on Isabel, so may be able to add to this in due course. 

I know that the second Mrs Albert (Royal) Delmont (Jones) is off the topic of Watch Tower history, other than perhaps a footnote. However, her assessment of men which you will find at the end of this article is an interesting comment in itself. Isabel Mulhall (Delmont) was a fascinating character. Albert obviously thought so, as newspaper articles of the day describe how he was first smitten just by her seeing her picture. It was downhill all the way from then on.

Albert and Isabel were married in 1896 and divorced in 1903. The Washington Post stated that this was after Albert met “financial reverses.” Isabel briefly went on the stage, before becoming Mrs Sidmon McHie.  Somewhere around 1906 she was in the news for accusing her chauffeur of blackmail, a man who was then employed by Mr McHie.  Sidmon was a Wall Street operator and publisher – and millionaire – you could smell the money. At a hurried secret ceremony they married in 1909. (see The Washington Post, August 1, 1909).

Isabel thereafter went by the name of either Isabel M McHie or Isabel D McHie, and one assumes the D stood for Delmont. She must have had financial assets of her own or been given some by Sidmon, because in 1919 she and her husband made wills leaving the other partner as main beneficiary. This became complicated when they separated acrimoniously in 1925. In 1926 an agreement was forged where Sidmon would give her certain assets and also pay her an allowance of a thousand dollars a month for as long as she lived. But there was a condition. The sixth covenant of the document said: “It is agreed that the parties shall live apart and separate and shall not annoy or molest each other.”

Salmon stopped paying the allowance in 1932 claiming in subsequent legal proceedings that Isabel had indeed continued to annoy and molest him. He divorced her in 1936 on the grounds of HER “cruel and inhuman treatment.” (See Fifth Avenue Bank of New York v. Hammond Realty Co., Court of Appeals for Seventh Circuit, October 30, 1942).

Isabel made the newspapers quite regularly. One occasion she was locked in the brig of a steamship for causing a disturbance. (According to the Milwaukee Sentinel for December 20, 1942, she tried to sue the Cunard Steamship Line for $100,000 over the incident, but the company successfully proved she had been – quote -“obstreperous”). When choirboys practiced at a church opposite her she played Caruso records at full blast! (The same citation from Milwaukee Sentinel). A ruckus at a Baltimore hotel resulted in her being committed to an asylum but she escaped when a Brooklyn clergyman (or someone dressed as one) came to visit with a heavily veiled woman, who exchanged places with her. (This of course is if the Brooklyn Standard Union paper for May 13, 1931 is to be believed.)

In 1935 she made the news again when she was “taken from a train” after throwing large sums of money out of it. From the New York Evening Post for March 22, 1935.

Isabel died in 1939 at the age of 63, after an exciting if not exactly happy life. She had been living at the home of her mother, Susan Mulhall, and her final resting place was at the Fresh Pond Crematory and Columbarium, Queen County, New York. You can check this out on Find a Grave.

Her paranoia was indicated by her will, which provided substantial funds for an autopsy and investigation in case she had been poisoned.

Then the fun started again. Who would inherit her sizeable fortune? Her father, who had deserted the family nearly 60 years before, suddenly reappeared to make a claim. The Milwaukee Sentinel for December 17, 1942 managed to snap a tender moment on the court steps between her parents.

A younger person called a protégé, also made a claim. And ex-husband Sidmon, who was still alive, made a claim. And the squabble went on until 1943, when finally her wishes were granted. (See Bingham Press, February 15, 1943). So where did the rump of her fortune go? It was left to a dog’s home that trained guide dogs for the blind.

And here is the punch line. Maybe it was the absent father, maybe it was the two husbands (both old enough to be her father, and including of course our own ADJ) – but she planned a sculptured bust of herself in her own memory, headed by the words which also adorned her stationery. It was a quote originally attributed to Mme de Sevigne (1626-1696):

THE MORE I SEE OF MEN, THE MORE I ADMIRE DOGS!

A. D. Jones, yet again

While in St. Louis Jones was employed by Arthur R. Jones & Co. I suspect a family relationship. Jones & Co. were seen as disreputable in St. Louis. Can we prove a family relationship? Here is what I know about A. R. Jones:

Arthur Russell Jones was the son of Bushrod W. and Lydia (Stickney) Jones. He was born in Vinton, Iowa, Jan. S, 1865. He had a high school education, advanced education in those years. In 1889 he married Edith Forrester.

In 1883 Arthur moved to Chicago finding employment with the Chicago and North Western Railway as a traveling live-stock agent. In 1889 he became assistant general manager of Street’s Western Stable Car Line; then found employment with the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway as general freight agent. He returned to Chicago in 1896, establishing Arthur R. Jones & Co. dealing in “commercial paper,” short-term unsecured promissory notes, until 1897, in stock and bond brokerage from 1897 to 1902, in commercial paper again, 1902-1905. In 1905 he organized the Mercantile Credit Co.,

The third Mrs A D Jones

(rewritten and revised from a few years back - for those who enjoy the trivia as well as the scholarly stuff)

Albert Delmont Jones (now calling himself Albert Royal Delmont) married Bambina Maude Scott on September 29, 1904. He was around 50 years old at the time and (if the 1920 census is to be believed) she was 21. A 1922 newspaper has a claim that her first husband was a Cincinnati millionaire. Cincinnati was certainly one of ADJ’s past locations. (Interview question: “Tell me, Bambie, what was it about this 50 year old millionaire that first attracted you to him?”) Bambina liked the name Delmont and kept it through several subsequent marriages, including John Hopper and Cassius Wood. In 1922 she was last heard of (under the Delmont name) planning to marry a Lawrence Johnson.

In the newspapers she is sometimes Bambina Maud Delmont and sometimes Maud Bambina Delmont and Maud sometimes has an E on the end, and sometimes not. But the “Delmont” is consistent.

Bambina liked getting married, but didn’t always finish the paperwork for her divorces and was subsequently charged with bigamy on one occasion.

In the 1920 census returns she was running her own shop in Los Angeles selling and fitting corsets.

Bambina’s claim to fame (or infamy) is her part in the Roscoe Arbuckle scandal. Fatty Arbuckle was a silent film comedian who was huge (in more than one way) in his day. He is probably remembered in film circles today as the man who gave Buster Keaton his start in the movies.

Arbuckle was savaged by the media when he was suddenly arrested and accused of rape and murder after a 1921 party in San Francisco. The victim was a small part actress named Virginia Rappe. The charge was subsequently reduced to manslaughter. Arbuckle went through two hung juries before being cleared at a third trial where the jury were out for all of six minutes, using five of them to write a statement making a formal apology to him for the injustice he had suffered.

There was little doubt that Virginia Rappe’s death was preventable. Health problems exacerbated by a series of abortions made her fragile, and she didn’t get prompt or proper care when she was taken ill. But the lurid accusations against Arbuckle all originated with Rappe’s companion who crashed the party, namely Bambina Maud Delmont. While Wikipedia cannot be called the most accurate of sources, it does quite a nice line in character assassination: “Delmont had a long criminal record with multiple convictions for racketeering, bigamy, fraud and extortion, and allegedly was making a living by luring men into compromising positions and capturing them in photographs, to be used as evidence in divorce proceedings.”  The Weekly World News in 1961 veered into alliteration by accusing her of being a “Tinseltown tart.” Her unsubstantiated testimony at the original hearing got Arbuckle indicted, but then the prosecution deliberately kept her far away from all the actual trials, because her obvious inability to tell truth from fiction would have immediately sunk their case.

So this was the third Mrs ADJ.

When you consider ADJ’s history after his “fall from grace,” it would appear that some people just seem made for each other.

Albeit briefly.

Addenda

For those who love trivia and conspiracy links, Arbuckle’s own third wife was Addie Oakely Dukes McPhail, the former wife of Lindsay Matthew McPhail, who was the son of Matthew Lindsay McPhail who had helped lead the New Covenant breakaway from the Society in 1909. You really couldn’t make this stuff up.

(With grateful thanks to Miquel for originally providing the McPhail connection)