W. H. Conley

 From a legal journal. I need more details. Please.

Maria Russell - The Later Years

     

     Maria Frances Ackley married CTR in March 1879.  She left the family address in 1897, and in 1903 started legal proceedings to formalize the separation. It was granted in 1906 and a later hearing in 1907 settled the alimony. This article reviews what happened to Maria later up to her death in 1938.

     After sharing a house in Cedar Avenue, Pittsburgh, with her sister Emma, Maria went to live in the Pittsburgh suburb of Avalon. She was there in 1906 because her 1906 book The Twain One was sold from an Avalon address. She is there in the 1910 census, living alone. She was still there in 1917 when a Bible student named ‘Sister Wilson’ called on her in what is described as “the regular Pastoral service.” The account was written up rather vaguely in the St Paul Enterprise for 20 February 1917, where Maria states she was not present when a Pittsburgh minister attacked her late husband from the pulpit as had been reported. The letter was headed “The Charge Not True” and the letter was sent in by J A Bohnet.

     The point was made in the letter that “Sister Russell…professes full faith in the ransom, in the high calling, restitution, chronology and the Studies in the Scriptures in general.”

     The letter also states that “Sister Wilson says she greatly enjoyed the visit and was invited to come again.” Maria also stated that she had much to do with the production of the first three volumes.

     Whether Sister Wilson made another visit is not recorded.

     While Maria was living in Avalon, her sister Emma gained a post at Bethany College in West Virginia. This was an educational establishment founded by Alexaander Campbell linked to the Restoration movement (Disciples of Christ). It had been a co-educational college since the 1880s. The details are given below as part of her newspaper obituary.

     When Emma retired, the two sisters finally moved to Florida at the end of 1922 and bought a house together. From the Tampa Bay Times for 24 December 1922:

     According to Emma’s last will and testament dated 13 September 1926 the two sisters owned the house between them; they each had “a one-half undivided interest” in the property.

     When Emma died first, her will left her share to Maria with a lifetime interest, but with the understanding that daughter Mabel, or if necessary her heirs would eventually inherit.

     Emma died in early 1929. From the Tampa Bay Times for 6 February 1929:

     This noted that her position at Bethany College had been former dean of women. A similar report in the Tampa Bay Tribune added that she’d held this position for eight years prior to her retirement. A telephone enquiry several decades ago suggested she had been “Matron of Phillips Hall” at the college which may be a more accurate description.

     The 1930 census shows that Maria continued living in the house on her own.

     There are several small references to her in the local papers – she leaves the area for a number of weeks to escape the excessive heat, she visits relatives in Chicago (her late brother Lemuel’s family), she tries unsuccessfully to get the taxes on the property reduced – etc. She doesn’t appear to have been much involved in local events, but that may just be because of her age. However, she still retains an interest in theological matters. One example is found in a letter she wrote in 1931. It is from the Tampa Bay Times for 29 July 1931, page 4.

     Under the heading Open Forum and with the usual disclaimers, letters to the editor were invited.

     Maria responded:

Editor The Times:

  If you can find space in your Open Forum I would like by this means to suggest a thought that present events have brought forcibly to my attention. It is that the present world-wide financial depression may really be viewed as a blessing in disguise however hard it strikes us both corporately and individually.

  It has compelled a sudden halt in human affairs, and both nations and individuals are forced to consider, to study, and to mend their ways. The eternal principles of truth and righteousness are put to the fore, and good men, providentially exalted to positions of power and influence, are pleading with the world, both as nations and as individuals, to repent and to do the works mete for repentance.

  Well, they are doing it. Praise the Lord! Our honored president points out and leads the way, and lo, the heart of the nations is yielding. Truly there is cause for rejoincing as nation after nation responds – in humility and in mercy toward one another. Financial prosperity could never have wrought this miracle, but “when the judgments of the Lord are abroad in the earth the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.” – Isa. 26:9.

  And this reminds me of the Lord’s typical course with guilty Nineveh. He sent his prophet, Jonah, to anounce that within three days the city would be destroyed, because the wrath of God was upon it. But Nineveh repented quickly, suddenly; and God also repented ad mercy stayed the hand of justice. It looks to me like a parallel case here on a very large – a world-wide scale. Consider: Notwithstanding the terrible experiences of the World war and its bitter aftermath, the interval since the armistice has been spent largely in hasty and feverish peparation for another conflict, which all know must be more terrible and ruinously destructive. No nation wants it, but anger, suspicion and fear impel them all to arm for defense from inevitable danger. (“And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come” – “Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth.”) But just as the nations stand today – armed to the teeth with every weapon of destruction that advanced science can invent, and trembling for fear of what seems inevitable in the nearing future, God has interposed in mercy and let the financial crisis come with all of its forebodings of world-wide disaster. Then, just in the nick of time He puts in the heart and mind of our noble president a plan for relief, conditioned upon observance of the principles of righteousness and mercy. Mr Hoover proved a ready instruments – wise, patient, resourceful, conservative, righteous, merciful alike to friend or foe. And lo, the nations and peoples almost everywhere respond, and the principles of righteousness and forbearance are everywhere coming to the fore.

  Judgment indeed must be laid to the line, and righteousness to the plummet, and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies (is doing it) and waters of truth shall overflow the hiding places of error and sin.

  Well, the world is breathing easier – with now hope and courage, and further deeply significant developments, at the arms conference, etc., will soon claim our attention. It is a time of prayer that those in authority may have wisdom and divine guidance, and that the evil forces may be restrained. A titanic confliect is on surely. But see Zeph, 2:1-3: “Before the decree brings forth, before the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of the Lord come upon you, seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness, it may be yer shall be hid in he day of the Lord’s anger.”

MRS. M.F. RUSSELL

E 516 Fourteenth avenue north, St. Petersburg, Fla.

     Maria’s views were now quite distant from the Bible Student movement. She was optimistic about the future, believing that the financial downturn in the world in the early 1930s was really going to work out the will of God.

     Although, as noted above, she was living on her own after Emma’s death, Maria did try to get some company. This was shown in the advertisement below from the Tampa Bay Times for 13 May 1932. She described herself as a “refined, elderly widow.”

     But in the 1935 Florida State census she is still living alone.

     As her health failed with advancing years, it appears that Emma’s daughter, Mabel Packard, and her family took responsibility for her. Her obituary notice in the paper spoke of her niece, Mrs Richard Packard “of this city.” When Maria died in 1938, her last will and testament dated 4 April 1936 showed Mabel Packard inheriting the house in full. There were also a number of monetary gifts to various nieces and nephews ranging from $100 to $700. Maria had also loaned Mabel $1400 and that debt was now cancelled.

     This all indicates that Maria was economically secure at the end of her life. As for the house – it last came on the market in the early 2020s and was then valued at over one million dollars.

     The Ackley sisters, Maria and Emma, both had concerns about money during their lives, but ultimately they were quite comfortable financially.

Swanee River

      Most articles on these history blogs have a very direct connection with Watch Tower history and pre-history. But others have a more tenuous link. This is one of the latter.

     Stephen Foster (1826-1864) is sometimes called “the father of American popular music.” He wrote over 200 songs, some of which are still performed today. Many suggest the music of the southern states, and were performed by minstrel groups, although apparently Foster only ever visited the south once in his life. Camptown Races, My Old Kentucky Home, Beautiful Dreamer, and Swanee River (Old Folks at Home) are among his titles. The latter became the state song of Florida in 1935.

     When he died in 1864 he was buried in the Allegheny cemetery, as were a good number of his family. Most readers here will know that CTR’s parents, siblings and other relatives were also buried in a family plot in this cemetery.

The Tampa Bay Times carried an interview with Mabel Packard in its issue of 24 January 1960.

     Mabel Packard was the daughter of Joseph Lytle Russell, CTR’s father, through his second wife, Emma Ackley. So she was CTR's half-sister. She was born in 1881 and when about 15, Stephen Foster’s brother, Morriston Foster (1823-1904) was a next door neighbor. From him she got the information that one of Stephen’s most famous songs that starts “Way down upon the Swanee River” was originally called something else – “the Pee Dee River.”  “Swanee” sounded a lot better and the name stuck.

     The house where Mabel was living at the time of the interview was the address for her mother Emma Russell, and also her aunt Maria Frances Russell from 1922 until their deaths. Emma died in 1929 and Maria died in 1938, but according to the newspaper cutting Mabel did not move into the area until 1941. That could well be an error. The obituary for Maria in 1938 mentioned a surviving niece, Mrs Richard Packard of "this city." Mabel died aged 80 towards the end of 1961, and is buried in the same family plot as Emma and Maria.

Herald of Gospel Liberty, July 11, 1912

This was a reaction to "Pastor Russell's Newspaper Sermons." This was included in an longer article complaining that Mormon-owned newspapers would not carry paid ads for anti-Mormon pamphlets. The reference to "Patent Inside" pages was to preprinted newspaper pages sold to newspaper publishers to provide them with content at a nominal cost, about what the publisher would have to pay for blank paper alone. Herewith the article extract:

We notice, too, that Mr. Russell, the Millenial Dawnist, gets his sermons in many of these "patent insides." Think of it! We know enthusiastic members of Protestant churches who publish papers, using the "patent insides," carrying to their readers each week "a well-loaded barrel" of Russellism. Do you suppose you can find a single Russellite editor who would be carrying with his consent a sermon against Russellism? It is time for Protestant Christians to be waking up we cannot afford to swallow everything whole which may be pushed at us. Indeed we cannot, and it is time for us to begin to choose the kind of reading matter that comes into our homes each week, and even daily. It is an insult to have a big dish of Mormonism and Russellism pushed at us in every literary meal we get.

From: Light on Mormonism, October-December 1929

 The editor published part of a very long letter from a former Mormon bishop who was "caught" between Mormonism and the Bible Students, attracted to both but part of neither. 

A "COME - BACK" OF RUSSELLISM 

Our article on this active and dangerous sect in LIGHT for December was entirely kindly and Christly, though as plain as need be; just as a surgeon must sometimes be very plain with his knife. But the response of the ex- Mormon bishop in Ogden, Utah, is disappointing. He writes a long letter, in a spirit which we do not like to see in anybody, and which is never justifiable; especially toward one who has been always kind and acted only in good conscience in this matter. We can best show needed facts by quoting a little from the letter. But please remember in reading it that its writer is a combined product of both Mormonism and Russellism, and that both systems are about equally evident in his letter. We hardly need say that from beginning to end there is hardly an assertion that is even based on fact, while most seem only ventings of enmity against the Christian church and its Bible truth, which often characterizes the work of Russellism everywhere.

  

The Bible Students, as you are pleased to call them, are preaching the message of the Kingdom of Heaven which is at hand, and which means the complete deliverance of the race from bondage of sin and death, Priests and Preachers, Hell-fire screachers and blasphemous defamers of God's name in general.

On the other hand, the antitypes of those mentioned above including yourself are preaching that God made man and with a foreknowledge that he would fall, then placed in him a soul that cannot die and prepared a torture chamber called hell in which to forever wreak out upon them the wrath of a God whom the Bible says is love. And remember, Rev., not over 3 percent of the earth's people ever heard of the only name whereby man can be saved.