These are two paragraphs of current work. I need more information, more biography for both these men, especially an identity for Bro. Brown who was a Seventh-day Adventist in Michigan. Can you help?
Response to 1883 Failure
Barbour
appealed for letters of support. A very few trickled in, and he published them
in the Herald of the Morning. If he wanted a measure of continuing
support, he must have been disappointed. However, examining them gives us some
insight into those who continued to see Barbour as the font of truth.
Alfred
H Fleisher [c 1833 – 1909] of Birch Lake Township, Minnesota, a very small
village near Hackensack, wrote that even if others “could do without The
Herald,” he could not: “Had I not become perfectly acquainted with its
teachings I might, in this hour of trial, say, I have no further use for it. But
our senses have been so much exercised through its teachings, that we can now
be patient. We have a glimpse of the land, and know that our journey will soon
be ended, and that we shall reap, in due time, if we faint not.” Divested of
its floridity, in the past he firmly believed Barbour, and he was reluctant to
abandon belief. Note, too, that he points to the Herald’s teachings,
ignoring the Bible which is supposed to be the foundation of Christian faith.[1]
Fleisher
was at least a casual Barbourite evangelist. A “Brother Brown,” no otherwise
identified, believed that “the hand of God was manifested in sending A. H. Fleisher
to introduce to me what appears to be ‘the faith once delivered to the saints.’”
He believed that God was “leading in this movement.” If either of these men
persisted after a subsequent ‘failure’ in 1885 is doubtful.
[1] Fleischer to Barbour, Herald of the Morning, October-November 1883, page 14. Fleisher was a Civil War veteran, serving as a private in Company D of the 4th Iowa Volunteer Infantry. His death date is recorded in his pension records. The 1880 Census gives his occupation as engineer.
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