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Thursday, May 14, 2020

Gertrude


I have recently been sent a very nice photograph of Gertrude Seibert in her wedding dress. It illustrates the need to check information carefully, and ideally get more than one line of evidence for a conclusion.


On the rear of the photograph is the caption


There is a problem with this. Getrude’s marriage certificate survives, and shows that as Gertrude Woodcock she married Robert Seibert on September 18, 1890. Robert was a wealthy railroad man, who left her very well provided for when he died in 1913.

The photograph could of course have been taken a year after the wedding – the sort of thing a wife might just do if her husband was foolish enough to forget their anniversary, but it really doesn’t look like that sort of photograph.

The clue I believe is in the caption “Our dear Sr. GW. Seibert.” Gertrude didn’t become “our dear Sister Seibert” to anyone until a number of years after her marriage. Her first poem did not appear in Zion’s Watch Tower until 1899, and her high profile stems more from the early twentieth century, with involvement in Daily Heavenly Manna (1905), Poems of Dawn (1912) and her own Sweet Briar Rose (1909) and In the Garden of the Lord (1913).

The simplest answer is that whoever wrote the caption for the photograph got it wrong. It would be an easy mistake to make many years after the event, especially if the writer was not in direct contact with Gertrude to check. But it shows the importance of researchers today checking and double checking everything they find. If they can.

Gertrude’s special contribution to Watch Tower history is probably her involvement behind the scenes in the production of the controversial volume The Finished Mystery (1917). To read her story and the story behind The Finished Mystery, see this old article on this blog:


Alternatively there is a series of articles about her from the same writer to be found if you punch in the search term “Gertrude” on this blog:



1 comment:

Bernhard said...

Great to see Gertrude in her younger years!
Thanks forsharing this!
Bernhard