S.P. Davey

 

     We are grateful to Liam C. for providing the scans below from The Bijou magazine, the Junior Class magazine of the Ohio Weslyan University for 1907, which gives some information about S P Davey, along with his academic history up until that time.

 

     Davey (full name: Devasahayam) is of interest to us because he helped in starting the work of the Bible Student movement in India. The 1977 IBSA Yearbook gives the following details:

In 1905, S. P. Davey, a science student who had gone to America, met Charles Taze Russell, the Watch Tower Society’s first president. After spending some time with him in Bible study, Davey returned to his native Madras Province that very year to open up the Kingdom work. Preaching among his fellow Tamil-speaking people, he eventually established some forty Bible study groups in and around Nagercoil, at the extreme southern tip of the Indian peninsula.

     Another source states that he translated Studies in the Scriptures, Vol. 1, The Divine Plan of the Ages, into Tamil and then Malayalam. 

     Charles Taze Russell visited India as part of his world tour in 1912. The Yearbook account states:

Russell and his party…prepared the ground for future expansion by giving lectures throughout India at the religious city of Benares, the historical city of Lucknow, and at Trivandrum, Kottarakara, Nagercoil, Puram and Vizagapatam, as well as the commercial seaports of Calcutta and Bombay.

Upon Russell’s arrival at Trivandrum from Madras, S. P. Davey greeted Russell at the railway station and garlanded him in typical Indian style. The British government representative, known as the Political Resident, received Brother Russell hospitably and invited him to stay at the Residency. He arranged for the Society’s first president to speak at the city’s Victoria Jubilee Town Hall. Russell also spoke at a nearby village called Nyarakad, where Davey lived. Afterward the name of the village was changed to Russellpuram, meaning The Place of Russell, and so it is called to this day.

         CTR’s visit to Russellpuram was reviewed in the 1912 convention report, which also carried a photograph of the two men together.

 

     Davey founded a school in Russellpuram, which still exists. His photograph, alongside that of CTR still hangs in the principal’s office.

     After the change in administration, Davey did not remain in fellowship with the IBSA. He died in 1939 and was buried close to the school he founded.