Thursday, February 25, 2021

For comment, and an opportunity to help


I am thankful for the documents and monetary help I receive. What I need is a persistent and adept gang of researchers, questers. Here is a small bit of a chapter I'm researching. It is unsatisfactory as is. Documents that would help clear this up include A. P. Adams' will, which may have been probated either in New Hampshire or Massachusetts - Probably New Hampshire, though I really have no clue. Some more information about Adams' son would be helpful. All I have is his name and birth date. Who is Mrs. Chase? Is she in the early issues of Herald of the Morning? The 1890 Seattle Directory hints that this might be a Mrs. Clara Chase. Can we prove or disprove that? Either would be helpful. 

If you truly wish to help, this is a significant way.

From rough draft. It will change:


Adams support seems to have come from one or two wealthy adherents. A short notice in the New Hartford, Connecticut, Western News reported that Adams held parlor meetings at the invitation of Mrs. Kellogg-Strakosch [1842-1916] on Sunday and Monday of the preceding week. On Sunday Adams spoke on “Death” and on Monday on the topic “Liberty.” This seems to be his ordinary fare. What isn’t ordinary is who his hostess was. Clara Louise Kellogg was “the first American Prima Dona,” “one of the foremost singers in Grand Opera.”[1]

            Clara Louise left us an autobiography. We do not learn much about her religious views from it. She pictured herself when a young singer as “an odd, young creature – just five feet and four inches tall, and weighing only one hundred and four pounds. I was frail and big-eyed, and wrapped up in music (not cotton wool), and exceedingly childlike for my age. I knew nothing of life, for my puritanical surroundings and the way in which I had been brought up were developing my personality very slowly.” She mentions attending church in various places. Beyond the brief article in The Western News we know nothing of her relationship to Adams. It is likely, however, that she and others like her were the financial mainstays of Adams’ ministry.

            An obituary notice placed by his son described him as “a wealthy, retired ... clergyman” who in later life owned a summer home “overlooking Lake Waukewan,” New Hampshire.[2] In 1898 Barbour wrote to Adams asking him to return all or part of a donation made to him in 1884 or 1885. Barbour was prone to lie when it came to his former associates, and we must proceed with considerable caution. Barbour’s version of events is that:

 

A widow, Mrs. Chase, then in the west, now living in Seattle, Wash. believing that the change to  incorruption was very near; let the editor of [The Spirit of the Word] have $500.00 to use as he thought best; saying at the time, “I do not know when I shall want this, if ever.” A few months ago I wrote to this man [he means Adams], informing him that Mrs. Chase was old, sick and in straightened circumstances, and appealing for help. Hoping that he would at least, join with me in sending her a little much-needed help; a little interest at least, on the $500. I would like to have all our readers see his letter in answer to that widow’s cry for help. But will only give an extract to show how his better nature is crushed to earth by his theology. He says, in giving and taking the money, (nearly all the poor woman had;) “It was a great mistake on her part; it was a still greater one on mine; this is from man’s standpoint, and a business point of view. From God’s standpoint there was no mistake at all.”[3]

 

            The remainder of Barbour’s comments are directed at Adams’ Universalist doctrines. They are sneering and not helpful here. If we assume that the basics are true, that a Mrs. Chase donated five hundred dollars for Adams to use in ‘the work,’ and that a decade and a half later Adams was unable to return it or any portion of it, we might not see Adams as a wealthy clergyman. Barbour suggests that seeing the entirety of Adams’ reply would be shocking, but he withheld it. As he did with Russell twenty years prior, he represents letters to suit his point of view. And, conveniently, he failed to say that his fiddlings with Bible ‘chronology’ prompted the belief that the “change to incorruption” was near. So we are left with a suggestive comment, but without a solid resolution.

           



[1]               Carl Strakosch Dies at Hotel, The Hartford, Connecticut, Courant¸ October 24, 1916.

[2]               Wealthy Minister, Son Here, Dies Suddenly in the East, The El Paso, Texas, Herald, November 27, 1920.

[3]               N. H. Barbour: Questions and Answers, Herald of the Morning, December 1898 – January 1899, pages 155-156.


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