17 Years

Last May was this blog's seventeenth anniversary. It has, I believe, become a valuable resource for historians and the merely curious. What do you think?

Only known photo of Jonas Wendell

Our thanks to Bernhard for his hard work. He rescued this from the previously posted group photo, a truly significant contribution to preserving our history.

A. D. Jones writing as A[lbert] Royal Delmont

 Library of Congress files:

Rescue this photo?

 Anyone have the talent or equipment to clean this photo? [Click on image to see it entire.]

Topeka State Journal - November 21, 1903

 A. D. Jones using a pseudonym. A major life-crash. 

A temporary post

 This is in very rough draft, the introductory matter to chapter three, Separate Identity, vol. 3. This post will come down within the week. Comments are welcome. Fact checking is even more welcome.

3 Albert Delmont Jones and William Conley

 

Early Years

 

            Albert Royal Delmont Jones played a significant though until now unexplored role in Watch Tower history. He was the son of Albert Delmont Jones, Sr. (born c. 1835) and Martha McCleary. His father, “a well-known riverboat engineer,” most often used his middle name in place of his first. Albert Senior was a Civil War veteran, serving as an engineer on one of the Mississippi gunboats.[1] After the war he returned to riverboat service, serving on the famous Boaz and on a lesser-known boat. He was a staunch Republican until near his death when doubts over tariff policy led him to question party loyalty: “I’ve been a Republican, voting that ticket, thinking it was right, and thinking by doing so it was keeping up wages for the workingman, but I … have begun to think that we are only helping the capitalists and not benefiting the public and ourselves.”[2]

remainder of this post has been deleted.

J B Kepner revisted

      

     The discovery of the undertaker’s bill for Pastor Russell was behind a recent article on Josiah Bushy Kepner. This covered what happened when CTR died. If readers of this post have not read that previous article, it would be of benefit to first do so, and it can be found here:

     https://truthhistory.blogspot.com/2024/05/j-b-kepner-of-waynoka.html

     The position taken in that article was to give a bit of Kepner’s background and to defend him from harsh criticism of his work. While this writer still believes the basic premise behind that article, in the interest of completeness and accuracy we need to look at the criticism is more detail. I am very grateful to correspondent Freddy who provided additional material that needs to be considered.

     W H Wisdom made the criticism in his 1923 book Memoirs of Pastor Russell that “through some more bungling the body was removed from the train at the first small town, where it was very improperly cared for in the way of embalming.”

     From where did Wisdom get his information?

     There are two accounts from the early 1920s that likely provided Wisdom with his material.

     The first, and least compelling, is a letter found in the New Era Enterprise newspaper. This was the newspaper used by Bible Students at the time for news and views and much found in it cannot be found elsewhere.

      In the 27 December 1921 Enterprise, Joseph Greig while visiting Texas, including Pampa (where CTR actually died on the train), wrote a short column “Pastor Russell’s Death Route.” Recounting the story he said: "Orders were given to remove the body at Wynoka, Okla., where an old gentleman cared for the embalming. One who knew this person said while he was not expert in his profession by reason of poor eyesight, nevertheless, he was possibly the only embalmer who never extracted the blood, but used his fluid in connection with the blood as a preservative."

     

There are several problems with Greig’s account. “Old gentleman” has to be subjective – Kepner was slightly younger than CTR. Then the concept of embalming by just introducing embalming fluid without replacing cadaver blood does not make sense. The whole point of embalming was to replace the blood to preserve the body  temporarily and give a lifelike appearance for viewers. The procedure was quite straightforward for anyone with the basic training and equipment – with or without good eyesight. Embalming fluid was pumped into the body, generally through the carotid artery, and was able to displace the blood through an incision in a vein (often the jugular). It used the human circulatory system to work. Sometimes massage was applied to help the embalming fluid to circulate fully. The procedure was refined during the American Civil war and after the body of Abraham Lincoln was so treated became quite standard practice where a body needed preservation for transportation or a delayed funeral.

     This account came from someone touring Texas, who never visited Waynoka in the next State and never met Kepner, although he was still very much in business in Waynoka at the time. It was written several years after the event. It falls into the category of “an unnamed person told me…”

     Of greater weight is a talk given by A H MacMillan on The History of the Society from 1910-1920.  The talk was transcribed, as was a short question and answer session after it, and some of the material – almost word for word – was to appear in MacMillan’s book Faith on the March (1957). Taken from this transcript:

    

MacMillan was scathing about Menta Sturgeon. Quote: “Poor Sturgeon didn’t know enough to take care of a sick chicken, much less a dying man. What he said himself about Brother Russell was enough to kill the man if he was half alive.”

     Reading Sturgeon’s detailed description of CTR’s last hours and his attempts to care for him; and in the heightened emotion of the moment “spiritualizing” some of those events, one can understand MacMillan’s comments.

     MacMillan also blamed Sturgeon for the body having to be removed from the train at Waynoka, where Kepner Undertaking was the only game in town. Sturgeon had chosen to publicize the death and Railway and State regulations kicked in. As MacMillan states “if he had any sense and kept his mouth shut” the situation could be been avoided.

     In his talk MacMillan was to further criticise Sturgeon for not giving the Bethel family the news. Sturgeon wrote to his wife, Florence, in Bethel, and told her. Only by intercepting the letter did MacMillan and others learn the news, before the newspaper reporters started banging on the doors.

     MacMillan could be caustic about Sturgeon because by the time this talk was given Sturgeon had ceased fellowship with the IBSA. He ultimately left all strands of the Bible Student movement and ended up canvassing for a Universalist group, The Concordant Bible Society.

     MacMillan’s distain for Kepner came across in his continued description: “They pulled the body off the train in Pampa, Texas, and took him to a furniture store.” As noted in the original article it was quite normal in small towns for the undertaker to have another business. A man selling furniture and perhaps making furniture could easily diversify into coffins, and if qualified, to provide the whole funeral experience.

     That was the next point MacMillan made. In his estimation, Kepner was not qualified. His account continues: “There a man who didn’t know how to embalm tried to embalm the body and made a mess of the whole thing.”

     Did Kepner know how to embalm? As the original article explained, he was licensed and the only licensed embalmer in the city. When he moved to Waynoka in 1913 and took over new premises The Woods County Enterprise (Waynoka) for April 18, 1913, stated he had been in business for 30 years and  praised him as a graduate of the best schools of embalming in the U.S.

     

Even allowing for self publicity, embalming was something Kepner did. He remained in active practice for over a decade after attending to CTR, only retiring in 1929.   His company, managed by his second wife likely hired someone else to do the embalming, and was still advertising in the 1940s. While embalmers may bury their mistakes (literally!) this man ran a successful business for decades. There was no hint of any issues in the many references to him in the newspapers of the day.

     We must remember that his brief was not to present a body for lying in state, rather to preserve it to meet existing laws for transportation. Kepner appears to have done what was needed. Contemporary accounts of the events surrounding CTR’s death spoke highly of him and there was no criticism from those who first saw the body before it continued on its journey.

     However, for lying in state, after a long journey being bumped about on cars and railroads, more work would be needed, including final cosmetic touches.

     MacMillan is then critical of finding suitcases packed around CTR’s feet in a twenty dollar casket. But this was not a casket for viewing; it was a simple coffin (actually costing thirty five dollars) to meet the requirements of transporting a body across America. Possessions that had been taken off the train with the body also had to be forwarded, personal effects, clothes etc. and the logical thing was to store them in the coffin if there was room. This may have been Kepner (and Sturgeon) just being practical, but MacMillan seems to have taken it as insensitive and disrespectful.

     So what was the problem? Everyone was very upset. Their beloved Pastor Russell had died. He looked old before his time, had been failing in health for quite a while, and sadly died in great pain. Opening the coffin in New York and seeing him was very distressing. There was turmoil in Bethel at the time. After giving the Bethel family the news, MacMillan described how “they met in little groups to talk and whisper, "What is going to happen now?"” Once the glue that held them together – Pastor Russell in person – was gone, then there were going to be problems, as events later proved.

     So there was an inclination to lash out. Sturgeon came under fire and Kepner came under fire. But after further work by New York undertakers several thousand were able to view CTR in a proper casket, first in the Bethel Home, then in the New York City Temple and finally, six days after he died, in Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Hall before the interment at United Cemeteries.

Strange Goings-On at United Cemeteries

     The Watch Tower Society owned a cemetery for a number of years in the latter days of CTR. Originally purchased in 1905 it covered around 90 acres and was a combination of three original cemeteries, named Rosemont, Mount Hope and Evergreen. Much of the land was never used for burials but included farmland on which, at one point, the cemetery supervisor John Adam Bohnet grew Miracle wheat.

     Most of the land was sold off at the end of 1917 to a neighboring cemetery concern, leaving only certain small areas for Watch Tower adherents. The most famous of these areas had a 7 feet high pyramid in the center designed to list on its sides all the names of those interred. Although the pyramid has now gone, the grave marker of CTR is still a feature of the site.

     Because it was a commercial operation originally and anybody could purchase a plot, the site sometimes featured in news items quite unconnected with the Watch Tower Society. Here are a couple of examples.

      The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper for 3 March 1908 carried the headline “Mourners Roll Down Steep Hill.”

     It should be noted that the driver’s injuries were not serious, although one of the horses had to be destroyed. The site is quite hilly and a funeral party took a road turn awkwardly and literally did roll down the hill – fortunately not adding to the fatalities.

     Then the next month, on 3 April, 1908 attempts to rob the stables of an adjoining farm for valuable harnesses resulted in shots being fired. A news item on 15 April 1915 noted that burials had now reached 1,700.

     However, what was probably the biggest news story of all to feature the cemeteries was on 12 April 1914 when the front page of a newspaper carried a photograph of an exhumation taking place. There can only be one thing worse than a burial in the pouring rain and that is an exhumation in the pouring rain.

Pictures reproduced with permission from newspapers.com

     

The headline across the page read “Body Disinterred in United Cemetery Identified as That of Mrs. Myrtle Allison.” The sub-heading read: “Damning Evidence Given up by a Grave – Scandal Still Grows.”

     

Some papers carried Mrs Allison’s picture with the story.

     

This was not the sort of publicity United Cemeteries wanted, although no blame could be attached to them.

     In early 1913 a divorcee named Myrtle Allison, who ran a boarding house in Wilkinsburg, was referred to a Dr Charles Meredith and his “private maternity hospital” in Bellevue, Pittsburgh. There, in March 1913, she had what was forever after referred to by the press as “an illegal operation.” This had to be an abortion. Discharged, she presented herself to another doctor who diagnosed septicemia. He contacted Meredith, who arranged for her collection back to his hospital. She then disappeared.

     Shortly afterwards there was a burial at United Cemeteries in the name of Daisy Davies. Over a year later a general investigation of Dr Meredith caused this very public exhumation reported on by the newspaper. At one point, a familiar name, J. A. Bohnett (sic) cemetery superintendent, was mentioned as guarding the opened grave.

    

Although Daisy had been buried in a cheap wooden coffin with a liberal application of quicklime, it was possible to identify from dental evidence that this was, in fact, Mytle Allison. A post mortem identified the results of “an illegal operation.” There were several arrests, but fortunately for Dr Meredith, the medical evidence cleared him of the charge of murder. He was sent down for five years convicted of performing a “criminal operation.” He claimed parole on the basis that he’d been promised a lighter sentence of only around two years if he pled guilty, but was turned down in December 1914. This time the charge was finally spelled out as “abortion.” Further attempts at parole were opposed by the Medical Board. On his release, he forged a new career in the lumber industry, but when he died in 1959, aged 92, his Find a Grave entry reinstated him as Dr Charles C Meredith.