Longish conversation with a brother, fellow researcher today. This is my follow up email.
Dear Brother ****,
You asked how I became interested in Russell era history, but the conversation drifted away from your question leaving it unanswered. We attended the Awake Ministers Convention in Tacoma, Washington, in 1959. Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Divine Purpose was released there. I started reading it as soon as we returned to our hotel room, developing an interest that never waned.
I had previously read the history series appearing in the 1955 Watchtower and the brief section in Qualified to be Ministers, but while they were interesting they were not as captivating as the JP book. As I’m certain you know Divine Purpose has many footnotes. I did not own most of the referenced material, but an older sister, Esther Stout, did. It came to her from a much, much older sister whose letters to Rutherford appear in Watch Tower issues from the 1930s. Esther loaned me bits of her library, eventually giving most of it to me.
I started writing up my research, producing a book-length thesis in the late 1960s. It was not well done, but access to resources was very limited. One resource that was available were my older companions in the truth. Our small congregation, then the lone group in this area, was populated by many who had been Witnesses from the Russell or Rutherford eras, and they were willing to tell stories. I was willing to listen, and as I could I followed up leads. Brother Luther Allen – he and his parents came into the truth in 1905 through reading Russell’s newspaper sermons - told me of attending a meeting in the Finley School House, just outside of Kennewick, Washington. I found a reference to it in an old issue of The Watch Tower that gave me the date and speaker’s name. Pilgrim N. W. Wisdom spoke on The Yellow Peril and Armageddon. Finding a newspaper notice in the long-defunct Kennewick Courier Reporter gave me the topic.
Research was an adventure before the Internet was invented and for many years thereafter. The Internet has many treasures; having it at hand has eased research quests, but one must still follow the faintest hint to move forward. Also helpful has been the willingness of many to gift me with older publications. So today I have a nearly complete set of The Watchtower back to 1896 as original issues, and, of course the reprints made in 1920. I also have a complete run of Awake! and Consolation and a nearly complete set of The Golden Age.
My current history series started with an article intended
for a Methodist history magazine. It quickly grew past the publication’s
parameters and turned into Nelson Barbour: The Millennium’s Forgotten
Prophet. I continue to research and
write, though as my health deteriorates that task becomes more difficult. So
that’s the basic story.
6 comments:
Thank you for sharing this!
Andrew Grzadzielewski
Thank you for sharing that inspiring story; I can only hope that some members of the younger generation eventually manifest the same interest in Theocratic history - and their own spiritual heritage.
Andrew Martin
Andrew states my sentiments exactly, thank you Bruce for sharing!
I too remember avidly reading the Divine Purpose book. How John and Lois could produce all those publications to prove their points in that study... My first real experience of Society history was when the British Informant invited those interested to ask for old publications as they were clearing out stuff in the old Craven Terrace Bethel. I put in a request and a fresh faced Bethel lad assigned to the congregation brought me a whole box - books like Jehovah, Preparation, booklets with lurid covers... I was hooked. And like Bruce, we had old-timers who went way, way back in the congregation.
You got me laughing, Jerome. "Lurid" is the exact word an elderly local sister here (who lived to age 96) described those booklet covers - and the anti-clerical cartoons that appeared in "The Golden Age" magazine.
It seems that although the old-timers were outstandingly faithful and loyal, such loyalty did not preclude their casting a skeptical eye on some of the more extreme features of Witness culture as it existed then.
Andrew Martin
That's funny, my interest in Russell and our history began when an elderly sister gave me her copy of a then old publication, the "Divine Purpose" book. For years I looked at those footnotes as fascinating unattainable information -until the advent of the Internet. Bruce's posts on certain blogs and then his books were real treats to me.
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