Two passports

Compared to America, those who search genealogical records in Britain are well blessed. Civil registration in the U.K. made the registration all births, deaths and marriages obligatory from 1837 onwards, and parish registers might take you back several hundred years before that. Not so with a “new” country like America, with its separate legislation for different States. As a result, many well known figures in Watch Tower history are not always in the official records.

However, one useful source of information is passport applications, many of which are online in genealogical sites like Ancestry. Below are passport applications for the first two presidents of the incorporated Watch Tower Society.

Charles Taze Russell

The application below was made from the Society’s Arch Street Bible House address on April 7, 1903.

It tells us the CTR was 5 feet, 10 and a half inches in height and that his hair was brown and grey. He was 52 at the time. His occupation is given as minister and editor. The affidavit on his behalf was signed by A E Williamson of the same address. Albert Edmund Williamson was a director of the Watch Tower Society between the years 1900-1908. He left association with Watch Tower over the new covenant controversy.

Joseph Franklyn Rutherford

The next application was made from 15 Hicks Street, Brooklyn in 1910 by Joseph F Rutherford.  He gives his occupation as attorney and counselor at law.  He lists as dependants on the same passport his wife, Mary M Rutherford and his son Malcom C Rutherford (here spelled Malcolm). It gives JFR’s height as 6 feet 2 inches.

JFR has given his birthdate as November 8, 1869. Years later, in 1920, when applying for another passport, because of the lack of official records, he had to provide some sort of proof for this date. It was obviously not required before, because he’d travelled extensively on the 1910 passport up the outbreak of the Great War. But now, proof of birth was required and his mother had to sign an affidavit. For those interested in such trivia, below is the document his 77 year old mother, Leonora, duly provided.