Foreign Language Fields within the United States

A request for a German language tract “setting forth the glad tidings” was sent to Russell in late 1882 and it appears in the December Watch Tower. Russell called for “a German brother with the necessary ability” to translate the October 1882 issue, a missionary issue, into that language. He also remarked that “a Swedish translation is also much called for. … Here is a place in the harvest field for someone.”[1]

Financial problems delayed the work in both languages. Russell explained:

As will be seen below, the Fund is in debt over $2,500, and of course no further work can be undertaken by the Fund until this debt is paid. We regret this exceedingly, and partly because in our last issue we held out a hope to some, who have long desired it, that we would soon issue the October Tower in German and in Swedish.

A plan suggested to us is the only way out of the difficulty which we can see. It is this: We can start two sub-funds, one for the German and the other for the Swedish papers, and those desirous of contributing specially to these can thus do so. A Swedish brother has already sent $8.50 for the latter, and a German sister $3 for the former fund. When either of these funds shall amount to $200, we will commence to print and go as far as we can. Meantime we will, by the assistance of brethren, have translations prepared.[2]

Contributions to the Swedish and German Tract funds came slowly. This isn’t surprising considering the difficult financial condition of most recent immigrants. In June 1883 Russell reported: “Our regular Tract Fund is still behind and the special Swedish Tract Fund, started some time since, has not flourished thus far and contains less than thirty dollars. It would require about three hundred dollars to issue a proper edition. Our Master is rich -- he owns the cattle upon a thousand hills, as well as the hills themselves, and all the gold and silver are His. If he deems the work necessary he will make the necessary provision. The German Fund has made even less progress, but as the interest in that direction is less we shall for the present be most interested in the Swedes.”[3]

The first significant work among Scandinavians is noted in 1883 with the publication of a letter from a Charles Seagrin, a native of Sweden. There almost no record of Charles Seagrin. Even his name is a puzzle, since it appears to be Anglicized. It may be that his birth name was Carl Sjögren. An individual of that name was born about 1859 in Hellstad Östergötland Län, Sweden and emigrated to the United States. He departed Göteborg on April 15, 1880, bound for New York.[4] There appear to be two or three all of the same name who arrived within months of each other. It is pure conjecture that any of these are the Carl Seagrin mentioned in Zion’s Watch Tower. Of these, the most likely are a man who left Sweden in 1879 bound for Chicago and one who left in 1873 bound for Cleveland.

Seagrin entered the work in late December 1882 or January 1883, “some six months” before he wrote to Russell. He saw a conflict between usual religious doctrine and practice and what he believed the Bible to teach. “Some time ago,” he explained, “finding my Bible teaching one thing and sectarianism quite another, I determined to go out as a lay Evangelist to preach the truth as nearly as I could understand it, among my own countrymen, the Swedes, and in my own language.”

His introduction to Watch Tower theology was by means of Food for Thinking Christians. While in Iowa someone brought him a copy and asked his opinion of it. He tried to explain away its teachings but became convinced instead:

I spent a whole evening trying to explain away its teachings, and afterwards retired to spend much of the night in thinking over the subject. The next morning I got the "Food" and my Bible, and began in earnest to compare the two to see if these things were really true-- after careful study of the Bible I came gradually to see the beauty of this real glad tidings.

I began in my preaching to introduce the teachings; yet to avoid reproach and secure the favor of men, I was tempted to limit or explain away these glorious Bible truths. Once on a text involving Restitution I had begun to explain it in the old manner, but the Spirit cut me off; I then thought to avoid saying anything to the point, but God did not forsake his Jonah-like servant. I saw at once the evil of so doing, and conquering the tempter, I did plainly preach "the restitution of all things spoken by the mouth of all the holy Prophets since the world began." I have never since compromised with error.

I find many who will listen for hours with close attention. Some reject the truth, but many hear with joy. Some that I thought slow to receive it were only trying the foundations thoroughly, and some of these are becoming its most firm and able defenders, many of these humble teachers with their Bibles in hand, are able to overthrow the wise and learned preachers of traditions. For nearly a year I have preached this truth with more or less fullness as I gradually came to a knowledge of it.

I have suffered much reproach and some trials and persecution for the truth's sake, but never since the time mentioned have I faltered or mixed truth with error to make it palatable to formal Christians. I find some infidels who, hearing the truth, are beginning to think the Bible is true, and some have accepted the truth and are telling the good news to others, showing that the Bible is reasonable when understood.

During the time that I have preached this truth some two hundred Swedes have received it and are rejoicing in it and telling it to others.[5]

Seagrin asked that translations into Swedish progress as rapidly as possible. Of Seagrin himself, nothing more is heard. There is no indication that he persisted as a Watch Tower evangelist, and his association appears short-lived.

It is difficult to read motivations into one hundred year old correspondence, and even more difficult to find clues to personality in a single letter. However, at the risk of falling into the trap of psychoanalyzing the dead, Seagrin’s letter impresses me as the writing of a less than stable but zealous preacher. More documentation is needed, and I would be happy to revise this opinion if it is ever forthcoming.

When publishing Seagrin’s letter, Russell explain that the Swedish Tract Fund had not prospered. The fund contained less than thirty dollars, he said, far less was needed “to issue a proper edition.”[6]

Still, the Swedish tract work came to fruition first. In October 1883 The Watch Tower requested the names and addresses of “of all the moral and religious Swedes and Norwegians you can gather; for samples of the Swedish paper.”[7] When a list was compiled, Russell announced the publication of twenty thousand copies of a sample issue of The Watch Tower in Swedish:

The Swedish tract fund reached such a sum as to justify the publishing of a sample copy of the Tower in the Swedish language, to be used as a tract, among the Swedish and Norwegian Christians, here and in Sweden. The notice in our last issue, that we were ready for lists of addresses of religious Swedes and Norwegians, brought to us many responses, and we will be mailing sample copies to the same, about the time you receive this paper. Whether there will be in the future, a regular edition of the Tower in Swedish, will depend upon the interest awakened amongst that people by these sample copies and upon the supply of needful means for the additional expense involved.[8]

Exact details of the first Swedish Watch Tower are lacking. It was issued irregularly. In February 1884, Russell reported that requests for the paper continued to arrive in his office, but said he couldn’t publish it regularly “until about 1,500 subscribers are pledged.” He reported that they had “plenty of sample copies … so continue to send for them.”[9]

By October 1884, Russell found interest among Swedish immigrants gratifying. He reported that “thousands of papers in English and Swedish are printed and sent forth continually. We mention this that you may know that you have a supply to draw from so long as the Master shall supply the funds. Order as many ‘sample copies for distribution,’ as you think you can use to advantage in preaching the ‘glad tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.’”[10]

The work entered Sweden through the irregular publication of the Swedish language Watch Tower. In October 1884, a Swedish immigrant woman wrote to Russell asking for three copies of each issue so they could forward them “to Sweden, to some persons whom I know for sure are thinking Christians and Bible students.”[11]

By January 1885, Russell could report that they had published “four numbers of the same size as the English Tower, containing selected articles—translations from English numbers.” He said there were about eight hundred interested Swedish immigrants interested in the work, but “the number of … would not justify … the regular publication of the Tower in that language.”[12]

An urgent request for “some Swedish brother, whose heart is filled with the love of the truth and with a desire to serve it, who … has no family; one who has a good Swedish education and a fair understanding of the English language” appeared in Zion’s Watch Tower in January 1886. One presumes this was to fill the need for continued translation and evangelization among Swedish speakers in the United States.[13]

As with the British and American fields, most missionary activity was informal, a point Russell makes frequently. His view of the work was that every child of God would use every opportunity to speak the Good News. The letters he selected for publication often reflect this. For instance in the September 1886 Watch Tower, he wrote: “The Lord wanted to gather some saints in Sweden, and he raised up some earnest Swedes in this country, who by private letters and translations communicate the good tidings to other Swedish saints.”[14]

Those efforts produced fruitage. None of the names of those in Sweden who expressed interest in the 1880’s survive as far as I can tell. Yet, Russell mentioned letters of interest from Sweden[15] One such letter signed only as M. N. O. appears in the February 1887 issue of The Watch Tower.

While Russell intended the Swedish material to address the needs of Norwegian immigrants too, it failed to do so. What ever led him to that idea, a letter from Charles A. Strand, [16] a Norwegian resident in New Orleans disabused him of it: “I believe that the Norwegians are a still more religiously inclined people than the Swedes in general. In short, I believe the truth would meet with a still better reception among them. You will probably question: ‘Do not the Swedish publications meet the demand of the Norwegians also?’ I answer, ‘No; the two languages differ so much that the Swedish number of the Tower is almost of no use to the Norwegians, and will hardly be read by any of them.’ There is also a little prejudice existing between the two nations. I pray God to open a way to have it published in Norwegian. The ‘Food’ and the ‘Tabernacle’ would, I know, be a great blessing to the saints in Norway.”[17] Russell’s reply was that translation into Norwegian should be done as soon as possible, but it would be some years before Norwegian publications were available.

Never-the-less the Watch Tower message reached Norway through letters from interested Norwegian-Americans. Strand wrote again, saying: “The ‘Plan of Redemption’ has met with a joyful reception in my Norway home. I heard from my father a week ago. He sends his thanks and warm greetings to you all. He says that it is not entirely new to him, having discerned from the Word the outlines of the plan; but he rejoices now ... in being more fully able to see the plan clearly, being aided by my translations from the Watch Tower and Food, together with long letters that I write. ... Others besides himself are also getting interested, to whom these translations and letters are read, as the epistles of old, to different little congregations.”[18]

It is impossible to tell what fruitage was born by Strand’s letters to Norway. Those responsible for the history of the work in Norway appearing in the 1977 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses quote from Strand’s first letter without attributing it to him, and reference none of his subsequent letters. This is regrettable, since it appears that the work in Norway was begun through them.[19]

Data conflicts create uncertainty, but the basics of Charles A.[*] Strand’s life are known. Strand was born in Norway in September 1852.[20] Census returns give him conflicting immigration dates, 1861 and 1880. The 1880 date is an obvious error. He was in New Orleans in 1879 and married to Annette, maiden name unknown.

Though not verifiable at this time, there is some indication that Strand saw Civil War service as a boy aboard the USS Pittsburgh, a stern wheel Mississippi River gunboat. The 1880 Census tells us he was a “mate” He worked on tugboats for a while too. In early 1886 he wrote to Russell, reassuring him of his continued interest: “I have not had a chance to do much work in the vineyard of late, as I am working on board a tugboat. The Lord has given me the two men – two brothers – I am working with. They are Italians by birth, and are very earnestly interested in the glad tidings, although raised in the Church of Rome.”[21]

Later that year he wrote more about his work with tracts and circulating The Plan of the Ages. He expressed his interest in the Lord’s poor, saying that his wife Annette looked after that part of their work:

Inclosed [sic] please find P.O. Order for ten dollars, for which please renew my subscription for the Watch Tower (three copies), and send another copy of Millennial Dawn. What is over use where most needed. The money I send I received in answer to prayer. I have been desirious to send my subscription and something for the Lord’s work, but somehow was not able to spare it out of my wages. Yesterday I asked the Lord to help me get it. Today my employer handed me twenty dollars as a present, which seems to me a direct answer to my prayer

I have been since asking the Lord to make plain his will to me regarding it, which I believe to be this, to give ten dollars for clothing and feeding of the spiritual man, the other ten I give to my wife for her part of the work, namely, supplying the physical necessities of the Lord’s poor around us.[22]

By 1886 he had his captain’s papers.[23] His letters to Zion’s Watch Tower taper off in the 1890’s, though not from lack of interest. Though still seeing New Orleans as his home port, he was in the Seattle-Alaska-San Francisco trade by 1900, first as captain of the Santa Ana, then as captain of the aging Centennial. He captained the Centennial through dramatic events during the Russo-Japanese war. The 1910 Census still lists him as an active steamship captain.

Strand organized the first New Orleans congregation affiliated with Zion’s Watch Tower and introduced the magazine’s message to Norway. He actively evangelized, especially among Norwegians until going to sea in the Pacific Coast trade. His name appears for the last time in Zion’s Watch Tower in the July 15, 1908 issue.[24] Much of his history with Zion’s Watch Tower is best told in another context, and we will save further details for a more appropriate place. Charles Strand died in New Orleans in 1914.[25]

German Language Immigrants

The first interest noted among German speaking immigrants is found in the December 1882 issue of Zion’s Watch Tower. Apparently in response to the November issue, a special missionary issue with a printing of 200,000 copies, Russell noted that “one German brother” sent one hundred dollars to support the work. The same issue contained a letter from Bern, Pennsylvania, requesting a German language tract.[26]

Plans for sample or missionary issues of Zion’s Watch Tower in both Swedish and German did not materialize as hoped. Russell started the tract funds for each language in January 1883. The German fund grew very slowly. When presenting Charles Seagrin’s letter about his work among Swedish immigrants, Russell remarked that “The German Fund has made even less progress, but as the interest in that direction is less we shall for the present be most interested in the Swedes.”[27]

In August 1883, Russell printed a letter from a young German immigrant then living in Omaha: “I have a perfect knowledge of the German language, and I am meditating upon what I could do. When the German people are won, they are faithful. I am assured there will be a way opened to them by our divine Lord somehow.”[28]

Even though no German language publications were forthcoming, small German speaking groups existed. In November of that year Russell, citing Amos 8:11, suggested that the German brethren were suffering from spiritual famine. “We shall give some special attention to the German Fund,” he wrote. “It will be remembered that this fund was started some time ago and then permitted to rest until the Swedish Tract-paper should be issued. Now we are ready, so far as in us lies to preach the glad tidings to our German brethren and sisters also. The German Fund contains about $25. When it grows to about $300, we shall begin to make a start, in this direction.”[29]

The German fund continued to languish for the next two years. In January 1885 it contained only $126.54, about a third of the Swedish tract fund. “We published nothing in German,” Russell explained, “the fund being insufficient for even a start, but, growing gradually, it may be of use some day; meanwhile, we have obtained the addresses of some, able and willing to assist, by translating, when we are ready.”[30]

Russell’s accounting of the German tract fund drew at least one contribution from a German speaker who had been reached with Food for Thinking Christians. He sent a contribution to be used to address what ever need Russell felt most urgent, and he expressed himself as ready to preach the message:

How I long to have all the back numbers of the Tower. Is there no way of procuring them? Any price! I am preparing to work among my (German) countrymen, and would like to have them on that account.

The glorious truth which since a year ago shone on my heart through the “Food,” becomes brighter and brighter. I had the “Food” three years in my possession, but never found time nor opportunity to read it, but always saved it. Last winter I got poor and lean and all creeds and dogmas seemed to leave me. I searched and found “Food.” No book ever took me like that. I forgot meals and all. I could not sleep for joy. O, the blessedness I have enjoyed since then. God is still revealing more and more to me by the Tower and Scriptures. Diaglott and Young's Concordance are great helps to me. I would like this glorious truth to be spread among my people. I find much opposition with some, but some take it readily. I am still in the Methodist Church (German), but preach and talk in private and openly of the glorious truth. What will become of me the Lord knows--I expect to be thrown out. I would much like to see you personally and talk to you about plans which I have. If any way possible, I will see you.[31]

Russell wanted to have the October 1882 issue of Zion’s Watch Tower translated into German for use as a missionary tract. This never happened.[32]

In March 1885 The Watch Tower printed a letter from a German speaker who was preparing to work among his countrymen. Neither a name nor a location is attached to the letter so there are no clues to this person’s identity. They were still associated with a German Methodist church but said they “preach and talk in private and openly of the glorious truth.” They expected to be expelled from that church and wanted to meet Russell and discuss their plans for German language evangelism.[33]

The message reached Otto Ulrich Karl von Zech, an Evangelical Lutheran Clergyman,[34] in November 1885. Von Zech was born in 1845 to Karl and Berta Franziska Louise von Zech and was “a member of a landed family from Thuringia who immigrated to the United States to escape military service in 1865.”[35] He became a German Evangelical Lutheran pastor, apparently after immigrating.

Zech was the pastor of Saint Paul’s Congregation Evangelical Lutheran Church in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, founding the congregation in 1871 with twenty members. He returned again as its pastor in 1883, serving in that capacity through 1884 when he moved to Allegheny.

He received the Watch Tower message through a gift subscription. In late 1884 or early 1885 Russell started sending the magazine to all the clergymen in Allegheny, and von Zech was included in the list. He regularly discarded it until the November 1885 issue, “to which his attention was called providentially,” caught his interest.

Russell issued Zech’s statement to his former church which was published as a special eight page booklet and sent out as a supplement to the December 1886, Zion’s Watch Tower. It was entitled Erklärung: Warum der Unterzeichnete seine Verbindung mit der ev. Luth. Kirche, Respective mit der Synode von Ohio und seiner Gemeinde lösen musste, nebst Angabe einiger Gründe.

His open letter explained his new doctrinal stand and opened with the statement that he felt explanations were owed to his former associates in the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Ohio. It was a scriptural due, he said, in the light of 2 Peter 3:15. A note at the end of his Explanation directed readers to Zion’s Watch Tower, giving the 101 Federal Street address.

The record of his troubles drew some sympathy from Watch Tower readers. A brief letter from a sister in Texas asked Russell to “please present the enclosed amount, $5.00 in the name of our dear Lord and Master, to our brother, Otto Von Zech, who has left all to follow Him.”[36]

Von Zech assumed responsibility for the German language work, preparing several issues of Zion’s Watch Tower for use among German speakers, and the first issue was ready by January 1886:

We take pleasure in announcing to our German friends, that we have commenced a German edition of the Tower, the first number of which goes forth this month. It will be a monthly, of eight pages, smaller than the English edition: price, 25 cents per year. The Lord seemed to set before us an open door in this direction, and to the extent of our ability we go forward to enter it by starting this paper. You also have a privilege in connection with this work. It is for you to scatter sample copies, and to awaken an interest in it among earnest German Christians. Do your part well, and while you pray, labor also and sacrifice in the spread of the “glad tidings.” Send in subscriptions and orders for sample copies at once.[37]

The April 1886 issue encouraged their use: “We have now issued several numbers of our German edition, composed in the main of translations from the English edition, by Bro. Von Zech. We want to get it into the hands of all the truthseeking Germans possible. You can thus help in ‘bearing up’ and ‘washing’ and making ‘ready’ the members of the body among these. Will you do it? Order all the sample copies you can use judiciously--Free. Those who are canvassing with sample packets of ‘Food’ and Tower should have samples of the German with them for such.”[38]

With the August 1886 Watch Tower, Russell urged his readers to send in the names of those who “might have a hearing ear for the truth, for samples of English, German or Swedish Towers.”[39] The German language version of The Watch Tower edited by von Zech never had a large circulation, reaching only about six hundred by 1894, and some of those were English language readers who subscribed to help forward the work.[40]

When Millennial Dawn: The Plan of the Ages was released, von Zech translated it as well. A notice that he was “now engaged in translating it” appears in the August 1886 issue of The Watch Tower, but his translation wasn’t released until 1888 as Millennium Tages-Anbruch: Der Plan der Zeitalter. He also prepared and published his own material. A letter printed in the February 1886 Tower suggests as much when it thanks him for two printed sermons he sent to the writer. No copies are known to exist.[41]

Enough German language interest followed von Zech out of the Lutheran Church that at least by August 1886 meetings were held in the G.A.R. hall over the Third National Bank at 101 Federal Street in Allegheny City. The German group met at 1:30, followed by two English language meetings.[42]





[*] The Watch Tower consistently gives him the middle initial ‘A.’ A newspaper reference gives ‘F’ as his middle initial. The Watch Tower errs enough on names to make this uncertain. Handwriting was as indecipherable in the 19th Century as it can be today.

Endnotes:

[1] View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, December 1882, reprints page 415.
[2] Watch Tower Tract Fund, Zion’s Watch Tower, January 1883, page 2.
[3] View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, June 1883, page 1.
[4] Swedish Emigration Records, 1783-1951, found at ancestry.com
[5] Brother Seagrin’s Letter, Zion’s Watch Tower, June 1883, page 1.
[6] View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, June 1883, page 1.
[7] See untitled announcement on page 1 of that issue.
[8] View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, November 1883, page 1.
[9] Requests, Zion’s Watch Tower, February 1884, page 1.
[10] View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, October 1884, page 1.
[11] Extracts from Interesting Letters,. Zion’s Watch Tower, November 1884, page 2.
[12] Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society, Zion’s Watch Tower, January 1885, page 1.
[13] Untitled announcement, Zion’s Watch Tower, January 1886 page 8.
[14] Seed Time and Harvest, Zion’s Watch Tower, September 1886, page 6.
[15] Answers to Your Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, February 1887, page 7.
[16] Letter from Charles Strand to C. T. Russell found in Encouraging Words from Earnest Workers, Zion’s Watch Tower, August 1, 1892, page 237. Strand was born in Norway about 1853. The 1880 census incorrectly has him born in Louisiana. That’s corrected in later census reports. He was a mate on a steam ship in 1880. Later he worked on tug boats.
[17] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, January 1885, page 1.
[18] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, September 1885, page 2. Not in reprints.
[19] 1977 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Watch Tower Society, Brooklyn, New York, page 194.
[20] United States Census for 1900: New Orleans Ward Three, New Orleans, Louisiana, National Archives Roll T623-571, page 20B, Enumeration District: 27.
[21] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, April 1886, page 2. Not in reprints.
[22] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, February 1887, page 8. Not in reprints.
[23] Soards” Directory of New Orleans, 1886, page 757.
[24] Many More Advice They Have Taken the Vow, Zion’s Watch Tower, July 15, 1908, page 219. Not in reprints. Pacific Coast service: Captain of the Santa Ana Finds a Deep-Sea Mine off the Nome Beach, The San Francisco Call, October 10, 1901; Steamer Oregon is Safe at Nome, The San Francisco Call, July 1, 1902; Two Kinds of Dredging, The San Francisco Call, September 20, 1902. Russo-Japanese War: May Have Been Captured, The San Francisco Call, July 30, 1905; Saved by the Fog, The San Francisco Call, August 30, 1905; Fog and Nerve Saved Vessel, The Pensacola, Florida, Journal, August 30, 1905.
[25] New Orleans, Louisiana, Death Records Index: 1804-1949.
[26] View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, December 1882, page 2.
[27] View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, June 1883, page 1.
[28] Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, August 1883, page 3.
[29] View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, November 1883, page 1.
[30] Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society, Zion’s Watch Tower, January 1885, page 1.
[31] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, March 1885, page 1.
[32] Watch Tower Tract Fund, Zion’s Watch Tower, January 1883, page 2.
[33] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, March 1885, page 1.
[34] Von Zech was born December 4, 1845 in Kleinballhausen, Kingdom of Saxony. He immigrated to the United States, settling in Pennsylvania. He died March 5, 1908, in Philadelphia.
[35] Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams: Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience, 1988, page 630.
[36] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, January 1886, page 2.
[37] The Tower in German, Zion’s Watch Tower, January 1886, page 1.
[38] The German Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, April 1886, page 1. Not in reprints.
[39] Untitled Announcement on page 1 of that issue. Not in reprints.
[40] O Give Thanks Unto the Lord, for He is Good, Zion’s Watch Tower, June 11, 1894, special issue, page 165.
[41] The Trial of our Faith Necessary, Zion’s Watch Tower, February 1886, page 7.
[42] Pittsburgh Church Meetings, Zion’s Watch Tower, August 1886, page 8. Not in reprints.

Stray thoughts.

Consider this a continuation of my earlier “editorializing.” This is really not an editorial, of course. It’s a series of more or less disjointed thoughts.

Yes, we know there are typos in our Nelson Barbour book. Unfortunately the wrong file was uploaded. Most of them are easily ignored. Please do so. Unless it sells exceptionally well, we are not revising the master print file anytime soon. At this point it is not an easy process.

We have revised our outline for the follow-up book, deciding to include material we intended to omit. We felt that the references needed were not available to us. This situation has changed enough that we can now tell those parts of the story in a connected way. We think we can present enough detail to be more accurate and present a more rational story than that now available. This will add three, maybe four, chapters.

We’ve had long and intense conversations about the meaning of a quotation, more accurately about the writer’s intent. The meaning is clear, I think. The intent is not. (Confusing, huh?) It can be approached in three ways: 1. It’s an outright lie; 2. It’s dissimulation by means of selective ‘truth;’ 3. It’s an attempt to escape sharing someone else’s reputation, but phrased in such an awkward way that the truth of the statement can be questioned.

The problem is unresolved. A good rule of thumb is to attribute the best possible motive to everyone’s statements and acts. In this case my personal opinion is that we’re dealing with a blatant lie. It’s a tough call, and we’re still sorting things out. Rachael doesn’t share my opinion. More research and more conferences are in order.

A stray thought: Being published opens one to the odd in human behavior. When Pixie Warrior, Rachael’s novel, was published, she acquired an online stalker. We’ve both had online marriage proposals, though not as a result of the Barbour biography but as fan mail response to our fiction. I think our mates would object if we said yes. I know my wife of forty years would object – after she finished laughing. Let me tell you: I’m old. I’m fat. I’m balding. I’m sick. I’m cranky. I am married to a woman who’s put up with me for forty years. So, No. Thanks, but no.

I enjoy my privacy.

And ... you might consider some counseling. Just a thought, that – but it’s a good one.

So, now, back to our work in progress: A section that was essentially an orphan, not long enough or detailed enough to be anything but an after thought has now become a chapter in its own right. It’s amazing what following hints and clues will do.

Our thanks to a “volunteer” who wishes to remain anonymous for some recent research! The documents are invaluable to us.

Some views of Watch Tower history have the character of religious myth. They’re firmly believed though lack documentary foundation. It is painful to see long held visions of history give way to what is sometimes a harsher reality.

A recent example comes from an email. In our book on Nelson Barbour we demonstrate that the idea of a two-stage partially invisible parousia predates the 1820’s. We quote Isaac Newton. Yet, the email I received insisted that the idea comes from Irvingites and Plymouth Brethren. Yes, they held these views. They did not originate them. Finding a source that says they did merely means you found a source that is in error. Also, Keith was not the first in America to present those views. We don’t say that; we tell you otherwise. Reread that chapter.

We also received a suggestion that we alter the spelling found in one quotation. That’s unethical. A quotation should preserve the original words.

What will you do when you discover that the idea of a totally invisible parousia in the sense taught by Zion’s Watch Tower isn’t a modern day Revelation of some sort? That idea has a history too. We include endnotes for you. Follow them to the sources. Check for yourself. Emailing one of us to support an exploded claim by someone else won’t change the facts.

We sift through oral traditions passed down as history. Some are worth reporting, even if they are unverifiable. There are two we feel (with reservations) deserve to be taken as factual. We’ve satisfied ourselves, though just short of historical verity, that the Russell’s Federal Street store was called “the old Quaker” store, even if it wasn’t named that. We are inclined to accept a report that Russell’s conversation with an “infidel” took place in a pool hall as probable, though unverifiable. The report fits in with the nature of YMCA and Evangelical Alliance tracting in Allegheny City.

Other oral traditions are just wrong. See our earlier post for an example.

A discussion from the posts - 1876 Centennial and the Russells

This is a comment from an earlier post:

"More on Philadelphia - Russell had a store at the exposition in 1876 in Philadelphia, was likely there several months, met Barbour there. He says in the Watch Tower that he remembered hearing Peyton Bowman preach, an Adventist, in Philadelphia. This possibly occurred in 1876, but possibly before that. Bowman had connections also with Restitutionist Adventists."

The only place we've seen this asserted is in the special history issue of The Herald of Christ's Kingdom published back in 2002. Brian Kutscher wrote:

"After seven years of study, while attending a display for his father’s business at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, Russell’s attention was drawn to a magazine entitled The Herald of the Morning, published by Nelson H. Barbour. He arranged to meet Barbour in Philadelphia and saw merit in Barbour’s interpretation of chronology."

This statement is flawed in several respects. An email from Brian attributed the point about the Russell exhibiting at the Centennial to Carl Hagensick. An email from Carl said, "The information about the Centennial exposition was by word of mouth passed on to me from Br. John Meggison who, as you know, was a pilgrim in Br. Russell’s day. I mentioned it once in conversation to Br. John Reed, Pastor Russell’s personal singer, and he did not disagree."

Oral reports are notoriously wrong. There are numerous lists of exhibitors for the 1876 Centennial Fair. There is no listing for J. L. Russell & Son in any of them we consulted. Many of them are searchable through a database. There simply is no record of the Russells exhibiting.

There is an alternative explanation. Russell says he had business in Philadelphia that fall. That's all he says. The Russells owned property in Philadelphia. Philadelphia was a clothing wholesale market. Either of these is a suitable explanation for Russell's business.

The statement is also in error when it discusses how Russell came upon the Herald of the Morning. Barbour mailed it to him. We have Russell's plain statement to this effect. The paragraph is a combination of a garbled oral tradition and the misstatement made by Jehovah's Witnesses in the Divine Purpose. When we wrote Nelson Barbour: The Millennium's Forgotten Prophet, we allowed in a footnote for the possibility that the Russells may have exhibited at the Centennial. See page 172, end note two. Since then we have searched catalogues of exhibitors to no avail. This is an example of a few facts being garbled and transmuted into a new story. This is not sound history.

Prove me wrong. I'd be happy to use this. It's colorful and interesting. However, our research leads us to reject this story as unfounded. The simpler explanation given by Russell stands. He had business. Period.

Oh, a mystery ...

Anyone pin this down to C. T. Russell?

The Chicago Daily Inter Ocean, Saturday, 17 Sep 1881, p. 14
Advent Christian Church, No. 91 South Green street.
Elder Russell will preach in the morning.

Benjamin W. Keith

Keith is in these two photos. We haven't identified which of these people he is yet. That may not be possible. But ... he is in these photos.

GAR gatherings in Dansville, Livingston County, New York

Capn' Strand ... the basics

Strand Was Master of the Steam Ship Centennial

Charles Strand was born in Norway. There are two immigration dates. It may be that he arrived as a boy with his father, returned to Norway and then later re-immigrated to the United States.

He was responsible for organizing the first congregation in New Orleans. Letters from him appear in Zion's Watch Tower from 1883 to the 1890's.

In the 1890's he was sent by the shipping company for whom he work to command ships in the Seattle - Nome - San Francisco trade. He remained at sea through most of the decade 1895-1905. He was involved in gold dredging, at least two high seas rescues and got caught in the middle of the Russo-Japanese war, narrow escaping from a Japanese attempt to capture his ship.

He, not the person mentioned in the 1977 Yearbook article, is the first one known to have introduced Zion's Watch Tower teachings into Norway by translating articles and sending them to his father. His father, who already held restitutionist views, circulated Charles' letters among several groups in Norway.

His final relastionship to Zion's Watch Tower is unknown.

Nelson Barbour: The Millennium's Forgotten Prophet is available here:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/nelson-barbour-the-millenniums-forgotten-prophet/7645313

Mystery

I need help identifying Charles A. Strand. Strand was a Norwegian immigrant who was in New Orleans by the mid 1880's. He may have lived in Minnesotta first, but that is uncertain. He was responsible for introducing Watch Tower teachings into Norway in the early 1880's.

Any help?

Another view of Watch Tower History

As long as I’ve been ‘editorializing’ lately, I might as well continue.

What passes as Watch Tower history seldom makes an attempt to connect the story to its environment. An example is Russell’s tracting work in the 1860’s. You’ve probably read the story about him chalking scriptures on sidewalks and walls where people were likely to read them. He wanted to save as many as he could from the fires of hell. But do you know what Allegheny City and Pittsburgh were like in the mid to late 1860’s?

There is a census of whores in Allegheny City and Pittsburgh. Prostitution was rampant, and in Allegheny City many of the shop girls were part time whores because they couldn’t live on the substandard wages paid by the small shop owners and cottage industries that characterized that place. Within easy walking distance of the Russell home were numbers of whore houses.

Murders were not rare. In 1872 an especially bloody murder was perpetrated just doors from the Russell residence. A man found his married sister sleeping with someone other than her husband. He broke in the door and stabbed the man to death with a short-bladed knife. His only regret was that he didn’t have a longer blade. It wouldn’t have been so difficult to kill the man if his knife had been longer.

Several tracting and missionary programs targeted Allegheny City. The Evangelical Alliance had one. The description of Allegheny given in the magazine article that profiled it (1857) is lurid. The YMCA had a tracting and Sunday School program. They provided Sunday School teachers and superintendents to local churches. Note the connection to Russell? Yet, none of those who profiled Russell ever bothered to record this. Why not? It’s easily found. It connects him to his environment and explains much of what he did.

As far as most of what passes as Watch Tower history is concerned, Pittsburgh of today is no different than it was 150 years ago. They do not remind you that the world has, to quote a Stephen King character, ‘moved on.’

I’m only scratching the surface here. Do you know what the streets were like in Allegheny in the 1850’s? There was no garbage pickup. You were as likely to step in something you’d rather avoid as to encounter a dead horse abandoned in the street. Anyone tell you this? And if you knew it, did any of the Watch Tower historians you read remind you of it. Why not? This is a vital part of the story.

I’ve had my say, not that it matters. I wish a more talented and younger person had taken this on. It is an injustice that those who should be most interested in this history have covered over or neglected more than they’ve told.

We don't always find photos ... but

James E. Anger


Ontario.

DEAR BROTHER AND SISTER RUSSELL:--I have been intending for some time to write you, but hitherto have had nothing new to add to the same old story of the amazing love of God for man. I am still holding on the same place of anchor--the ransom for all, the rock Christ Jesus. For the past six years I thought, like Elijah of old, that I was the only one in this place that cared for God, and that (typically speaking) many were seeking my life; but the good Lord has shown me that I was mistaken. During last Summer brother Wiltze moved to this town, and we at once met regularly for communion and study. Through him I learned that one of the members of the official board of the Methodist church with me when I resigned from the board and withdrew from the church was now reading DAWN and quite interested in its teaching. This brother had the DAWN at the time I left the church, but on the advice of the Minister he laid it away as a dangerous book. I called to see him and found both him and his wife much interested. After that they met with Bro. Wiltze and myself until they removed to near Boston, and I am informed that they meet regularly with the brethren in Boston. This greatly encouraged us to persevere in the work.

Two weeks ago I stepped into the butcher shop of a stranger to me to purchase a piece of meat, and while getting it ready he asked me if my name was Anger. I said, yes. He said he had heard of me as a reader of MILLENNIAL DAWN and that he had also been reading it. I asked, How do you like its teachings? His reply was that it was the only satisfying explanation of the Bible and the plan of salvation. His wife came in, and I was introduced to her. She was very enthusiastic, and I learned from her that her father had been a reader and believer of DAWN and its teachings for eight years, that her brother and sister and others of the family were also believers. On my way home I called upon her father and found him strong in the faith, and another daughter as enthusiastic as the father. After exchanging views for some time I invited them to come to our meetings at my house, and the next afternoon the daughter and her husband came out and we had a profitable time. I should have mentioned that before I knew of these brothers and sisters a son of the brother above mentioned had also become a believer, and was meeting regularly with us and is making rapid progress in the truth.

One week ago to-day our little company numbered eleven, all but three of whom I believe are true believers, and the others not real opposers. To-day there were only five present, but one of them was a new convert to the old gospel. And so the Lord is leading and we are rejoicing and beginning to understand why he has prevented us from closing up our affairs in this town in order to get out of it over a year ago. Some time ago we came to the conclusion that the Lord had a work for us to do here, but we could see no opening, for the ministers had effectually closed the door against us by warning their people to avoid us as dangerous persons to talk to on religious subjects, as hot-headed persons, religious cranks and disbelievers in God's Word. When these things came to us, we rejoiced that we were accounted worthy to suffer with Jesus, for in his day he was regarded very much the same by the religious people of that time. "Blessed are ye, when men shall speak all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake." (Matt. 5:11.) But none of these things move us, for we know in whom we have believed, and that he is more than all they who are against us.

It is a strange thing that our opposers do not try to show wherein we have retrograded in life and action, but put forth all their efforts to show what a fearful thing it is to leave the church. To leave the church is a sure passport to perdition, and a man must be bad when he leaves the church, altho he neither swears, deals falsely with his neighbors or in any way deviates from the best standard of correct living, but on the other hand has an increased love for and faith in God's Word, diligently studies it to find out God's perfect will and earnestly strives daily to bring his life and conduct to harmonize with that Word. Yet herein is [R2142 : page 124] the evidence that human nature is still the same, perverted and unregenerated and far below the standard of perfect human nature.

What a glorious reality is the religion of Jesus Christ!--glorious in its contemplation, glorious in its possession, glorious when we can get but one to espouse it, yet more glorious in its after-fruits, when we (the Church) shall have the privilege of instructing, guiding, controlling and leading our friends (now enemies) back to righteousness and to God during the space of a thousand years. We are content to do the Master's will in any way it may be required, and are rejoicing at the prospect of the progress of truth, and if need be are willing to suffer for it. May God keep us humble, willing and obedient.

Your brother in Christ, an ardent follower of the Lamb,

J. E. ANGER.

Scranton Tribune, May 1, 1897

Author of Millennial Dawn
C. T. Russell to Speak in Scranton Next Wednesday Night

The Scranton, Pennsylvania, Tribune
May 1, 1897

Scranton readers and students of the “Millennial Dawn,” series of Bible helps, and all others who are interested in the subject of the pre-millennial advent of the Lord have a rare treat in store for next Wednesday evening. C. T. Russell, the author of these words has consented to come to Scranton and deliver an address on “Why Christians Should Take a Lively Interest in the Second Coming of the Lord,” in the Green Ridge Tabernacle on May 5.

Mr. Russell’s avowed object to writing “Millennial Dawn” was “to vindicate the Divine character and government and to show by a recognition and harmonizing of all the Scriptures that the permission of evil, past and present, is educational in its character and preparatory to the ushering into the golden age of prophecy in which all the families of the earth will be blessed with a full knowledge of God and a full opportunity for attaining everlasting life through the Redeemer, who will then be the great Restorer and Life Saver. (Acts iii, 19-21).”

Mr. Russell stands free from all creeds and sects of men and is therefore able to give an unbiased view of every phase of Scripture truth and it is believed that all classes of honest thinkers who read his works will be enabled to realize the Bible as indeed God’s word and to recognize his plan therein revealed as one sublime exhibition of justice, wisdom, love and power. This is born out by the fact that “Millennial Dawn” has been the direct means of conversion of hundreds of life infidels.

The Green Ridge Tabernacle, where the address is to be given Wednesday evening, is on Jefferson avenue, near the Dunmore Suburban trolley line. The admission will be free and there will be no collection

Anyone have these?

Gilbert Love, "It Started Here" [Jehovah's Witnesses], Pittsburgh Press, 14 November 1958.


George Swetnam, "Pastor Russell: 1200 Congregations; 30,000 Sermons: North Side Youth Helped Launch Chain Store System, Then Abandoned It to Become One of the World's Most Controversial Religious Teachers," Pittsburgh Press, 23 August 1953, 6(Sunday Magazine).

We need a clear photocopy of scan. Can anyone help?

Old Quaker Shop - Challenges - Documentation

Thanks in part to two very kind and helpful interested parties, we're making progress with two chapters on Russell's early years.

We're still trying to trace down the origins of the name "Old Quaker Shop." Someone (and I've very thankful for their help) sent me a bit from the Pittsburgh Press of June 15, 1967, where this claim is made: "Mr. Russell's business was known as 'the Old Quaker Store,' from the picture signboard, of a type often used here and elsewhere when many people were unable to read."

This sounds reasonable. I would like contemporary documentation. The closest we have gotten to contemporary is the 1919 Convention Report. I'd be much happier with something published while Russell was still alive.

I desperately need the November 1, 1877, Herald of the Morning. We never located this issue when researching the Barbour book, but it wasn't as big an issue for that book as it will be for our work in progress, which will detail more closely Russell and Barbour's association and separation. Anyone know where we can find this?

I'm very interested in Russell's presentation of his childhood. We think it refelects his view of his ministry. When we document it, we will present it that way. By 1881 Russell saw himself as God's instrument. The development of his personal view of self can be told only partially in our next book. We stop with 1887 or so. Most of that story will be in book three, if I live long enough to complete that one. If not, someone else can tell it.

I see this as becoming progressively more difficult. The resources required are harder to find and will continue to become difficult. There are also growing issues of interpretation. One should, I believe, put everyone's motive in the best light unless there is reason not to. We have some close calls to make in this new book. There are so many conflicting emotions displayed. Some of the statements by the principals must be read over and over to understand them. Some people are just obvious. I wish they all were.

The most obvious is Albert Delmont Jones who was vain, a thief, and responsible for another's suicide. Jones was a villain pure and simple, a modern day Judas. But Jones is also a complex man. (Aren't we all? - complex I mean.)

At a certain point every historian must make decisions on how to portray those whose life he chronicles. Our preference has been to let them speak for themselves; so we tend to use quotations more than most historians would. If anyone comes off well, it should be based on what they really said and did. The inverse is true too.

Another issues is that some with a partisan spirit wish to see some of the principals as nearly perfect. Partisan spirit arrays itself on various sides. Alas, no human approaches perfection. If you idolize a man, you will be disappointed. Without exception, none of those involved in the Watch Tower movement in the period we now consider were flawless. All were flawed in some way. That's how people are. That's how they were.

We're not writing a eulogy. We're writing history. Expect us to tell an accurate story, even if it makes someone you admire appear less than attractive in one or two circumstances. That's a general statement, and it covers all those involved. At least human faults make for interesting history.

It pleases me to see that the two ratings given to our book are both the highest possible. Thanks to whoever rated our book!

The Rules

Calling me at home to "discuss" my book is a no-no. This blog exists as a forum for you to ask your questions and make your comments. I will not engage with you over the phone; I will not debate the merits of your theology or mine via the phone either. You most certainly may not call me or Miss de Vienne. There is nothing you have to say that can't be said in an email or blog post.

If you have comments or questions, you may post them here or use the email given on this blog. We will not respond to questions about our personal life. Our religious beliefs are not the subject of this forum. Watchtower history is. That this blog is named "truth history" should give you enough of a clue as to where I stand on most issues.

You will not find your chances of engaging me in dialogue improved by using as a reference the name of a person whom I neither trust nor respect. It is very unwise to name drop. You may not like my reaction if you do.

I don't know how I can make my position clearer. I am only interested in an accurate presentation of Watch Tower history. Our research and writing forwards no agenda except a clear and accurate presentation of history as it can be known.

As heartless as it may sound, I'm not interested in your beliefs, complaints, or theological speculations. Both Rachael and I have our own. We share them in other contexts. This blog is about history -- accurately presented, well researched history. We are not interested in polemics and we're not interested in your theological views. All are welcome here as long as they behave. Consider it our “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Unfortunately, I am not able to provide copies of the references we used, except on a very limited basis. I am - to put it bluntly - old. I'm in declining health, and I have limited funds. I do not have enough money to return long distance calls, and I find calls to my home to be rude and intrusive. As a young man, my long term goal was to grow up to be a cranky old man. I finally made it. I’m not going to spoil it by taking your uninvited telephone calls.

To recapitulate (because some people just don't get it the first dozen times): 1. Do not call my house. 2. Do not call Rachael's house. 3. If you have comments or questions, post them on this blog. 4. Do not presume that I agree with you. I probably don't. 5. If it isn't about 'truth history,' I don't want to hear it. 6. We're not a resource for your unfounded, poorly researched, ill considered polemics. Don’t ask. That’s not why we're here.

My resources and stamina are limited. I usually cannot make photocopies, even if you offer to pay. I tell my students that they must do their own research. If I make my students do that, guess what I’m going to tell you. ...

Bits ... and some help, please ...

This is the photo mentioned below. This is the best quality I have. Can anyone do better?

Bits of things have come our way, some the result of our own research and some from interested blog readers. As with most fragments of history, they raise some questions.

The 1919 Convention Report says that Russell store was called “The Old Quaker Shop.” I can’t verify that from any of the Pittsburgh Directories. Fahnestock’s Directory for 1850 simply lists J. L. Russell as in the dry goods business on Federal Street in Allegheny. It does not name the store. The only name for their clothing business I can find is J. L. Russell & Son. Obviously this is not the original name. We would like to verify from another source that the original name of the Russell’s store was “The Old Quaker Shop.” Anyone?

In 1865 J. L. Russell is living on Wylie Street and is listed as a salesman. Did he go out of business for a period? Anyone know?

Joseph L. Russell was exempted from Civil War service because of some sort of disability. The Rebellion Record of Allegheny County has him in the exemption lists, where his exemption is noted as “d. c.” or “disability certificate.” Anyone know more?

I wonder what it took to obtain a disability certificate. We’ll make that a bit of research.

Can anyone send me a clear scan of the photo of Russell and his brother that’s in the special issue of Zion’s Watch Tower for 1912? I have a very poor scan of that. It’s not usable. Can anyone do better?

A historian's rant ...

Some of those who read this blog do not seem to understand how history is researched and written. Some explanations may help.

Research is guided serendipity. It’s a series of progressively more educated guesses that lead one to new resources. The most frustrating part of research is being denied access to material. We know that key events that do not appear in any history of the Watch Tower movement are discussed in Pittsburgh newspapers between 1877 and 1883. We have references to those articles from other sources. The Pittsburgh Public Library does not send out microfilms through Interlibrary Loan. We haven’t found the material elsewhere yet. We keep chipping at it. One of the articles was picked up by other papers, and we found it reprinted in a Chicago newspaper. But there is an interchange between Russell and a clergyman, controversial material connected to a series of lectures, and other mater we have yet to see.

Does this mean we “don’t write” until we see this material. No. That’s would be silly. Writing up what we have found helps us organize our thoughts and plan additional research. Our newly released book on Nelson Barbour started life as a short article for a history journal. It was supposed to be less than ten thousand words long, not counting end notes. Four re-writes later, it was apparent that we had a book developing. We abandoned the article and focused on the research. The original article became two chapters, then three and finally the 176 page book.

Writing isn’t a one shot process. It’s a series of re-writes followed by additional thought and additional research. One asks themselves, “Why don’t we know this?” or “Where can I find that?” Old conclusions melt away or go up in smoke. Cherished stories are sometimes found to be myth. One finds unexpected insights into personalities.

Inexperienced writers see their words as their children. Neither Rachael nor I are inexperienced. Rachael writes fantasy fiction. I write young adult fiction under another name. (No, I won’t tell you what name. Let’s not cloud the issue with extraneous things. Both my fiction and my history stand on their own.) Words are tools, not children. You don’t murder your child when you edit out a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or most of a chapter. Editing is part of writing. Rethinking historical issues works best if you write up what you know. You may dump it all into a shredder as your research progresses, but it helps you think.

That’s why you see preliminary snippets on this blog. We’re thinking it through. You get to see where we are. We get your input, though most often our posts just sit here with no comments.

We get just enough input to be helpful. A photo of Calista Downing, the first Watch Tower missionary in China came our way through a blog comment.

We do not question your beliefs. Some of those who read our blog are Bible Students –Russellites, to use the pejorative term. Some are Jehovah’s Witnesses; some were Jehovah’s Witnesses but are not now. Some readers have anti-Russell agendas. Some don’t. This blog isn’t here to support a party. It’s here to support what we see as the first real effort to document Watch Tower history in a public and professional way.

Some do not see our efforts in this light. Rachael was attacked on one of the forums for even considering writing about Barbour because he was a villain and not worth notice. Brother Russell said so. A person whose articles you may have read in a well-known religious periodical no longer counts me as his friend because an accurate history portrays ‘the truth’ in a bad light, as less than divine. At least that’s his opinion. I’ve been disfellowshipped from his email list. In his view, if I’m not a dangerous apostate I soon will be because I dare to write a detailed history of Zion’s Watch Tower’s early years and discuss influences on and the back ground to the acts of early believers.

I am no such thing, of course. But he thinks I am. In his view the only proper thing to do with my research is to write it up and send it to the publishers of his magazine where it can be filed with other similar research reports.

A few anti-Witness readers do not have their comments posted. They’re obnoxious and stupidly uninformed.

So, we’ve managed to upset people from every interest group. We must be doing something right.

Our sole interest is in an accurate presentation of Watch Tower history as it can be known. We limit speculation, and if we choose to include it, we label it as such. There are any number of suppositions we will not include. For instance, we suspect on what we feel is sufficient grounds that two of Russell’s early associates had a years-long extra marital affair. We do not have definitive proof – only hints from circumstances and documents. We will never include this unless we can irrefutably prove it. I believe it happened. It’s not history until we can document it. Because of the nature of hidden affairs, we will probably never have more than a suspicion. We won’t name names, though they’re both dead for nearly a century.

Watch Tower opponents puzzle me the most. I’m writing narrowly of those who produce anti-Russell propaganda. We find contrived quotations. We found one book, now out of print, that ends a quotation from one of the Watch Tower publications in the middle of a sentence, changing the meaning of the paragraph. This is wrong. Worse, it’s silly. If you want to oppose, feel free to do so. Debate is a healthy thing. You automatically lose the debate when you lie. Sooner or later someone will ask you where you found that ‘quotation.’ Alas, you made it up. Bad boy.

I don’t mean to denigrate the efforts of those who produced the various ‘histories,’ but most are partisan efforts. Some of them are fable; some are polemic; most are self-serving. All of them omit key facts, and it is often the omission the skews the story. I usually avoid naming names. I won’t break that rule in this post, but I will say that there are two writers out there with history degrees whose books on the early history of Zion’s Watch Tower and it’s more modern adherents (Witnesses and Bible Student groups) do not deserve the name of ‘history.’

There are sociological studies, recent and quite old, that would not pass muster as a first year paper in any reputable university. If you’ve read Stroup’s book, you know what I mean.

Our goal is to tell the history as accurately as possible and with sufficient detail that a clear picture of it can be seen. (Yes, I know that’s a mixed metaphor. Sometimes you have to break some eggs to stir the pot! – You may laugh at that. The joke is intentional.) We’re not writing to support your faith or tear it down. We do not write to feed your anti-Witness propaganda mill. We do not write to hold Russell up as the Faithful Slave. We do not write to prove your religion true or false. We only write to tell the story in a way that allows us to say, “Yes, that’s how it happened, and to the extent we can know it, that’s why it happened.”

Bits of things ...

If you have trouble with the lulu.com ordering system when trying to order Nelson Barbour: The Millennium's Forgotten Prophet, I would appreciate knowing of it.

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/nelson-barbour-the-millenniums-forgotten-prophet/7645313

We've started on the chapter that details Russell's experiences with Wendell, Stetson, Storrs and others between 1871 and 1876. I've pasted a bit of it below. I'm not happy with the details we've uncovered. Please read what we have (though it's a very rough draft) and leave any comments you think helpful.

2. Among the Second Adventists

Russell’s experimentation with various religions was short lived. As he recounts it:

Gradually I was led to see that though each of the creeds contained some elements of truth, they were, on the whole, misleading and contradictory of God's Word. Among other theories, I stumbled upon Adventism. Seemingly by accident, one evening I dropped into a dusty, dingy hall, where I had heard religious services were held, to see if the handful who met there had anything more sensible to offer than the creeds of the great churches. There, for the first time, I heard something of the views of Second Adventists, the preacher being Mr. Jonas Wendell, long since deceased. …

Though his Scripture exposition was not entirely clear, and though it was very far from what we now rejoice in, it was sufficient, under God, to re-establish my wavering faith in the divine inspiration of the Bible, and to show that the records of the apostles and prophets are indissolubly linked. What I heard sent me to my Bible to study with more zeal and care than ever before, and I shall ever thank the Lord for that leading; for though Adventism helped me to no single truth, it did help me greatly in the unlearning of errors, and thus prepared me for the Truth.[1]

This is almost all the detail Russell provides. He adds in another place that this took place that this occurred “about 1869.” The evidence suggests me meant this happened in 1871. Wendell and Russell would quickly develop a mutual friendship, and Russell remembered him as “my friend Jonas Wendell.”

Wendell was born December 25, 1814, in Minden, Montgomery County, New York, to Jacob and Magdalena Wendell. They christened him in the St. Paul’s Church, a Lutheran Church in Minden Township, on January 22, 1815. Jonas Wendell became a Second Adventist in after the Millerite failure of 1843. He was converted to Adventism not long after accepting Christ’s salvation. A short obituary written by his friend and coworker, George Stetson, says: “He experienced remission of sins in Syracuse, N.Y., about 1843, and united with the M.(ethodist) E.(piscopal) church. About 1845 he came into the truth of life and immortality in Christ only, of his soon coming, and reign with the saints on earth renewed, and the everlasting destruction of the finally impenitent wicked.”[2] Wendell’s conversion to Adventism was through the efforts of Lucy Maria Hersey (Later Stoddard), a Millerite author and evangelist. Her preaching raised the issue of the propriety of women preachers in the Adventist body, and though there was some objection, the consensus was to allow them freedom to preach. Isaac Wellcome recorded, that “Jonas Wendell, and several ministers who are now proclaiming the gospel, state that their conversion was through her preaching.”[3]

Wendell started preaching in Syracuse, New York, in 1847 with some success. He associated with John C. Bywater, a Rochester, New York, minister who in turn was a close associate of Owen Russell Crozier and would advocate Crozier’s “Age to Come” theology. Bywater and Wendell advocated 1850 as the date for Christ’s return, writing articles espousing that view for various Adventist periodicals. Wellcome records it this way:

“Elders J. C. Bywater and Jonas Wendall started specially to advocate that the Lord would make his second advent in 1850. The other papers of the Adventists published the writings of these believers but also gave their reasons why the arguments were not to be relied on as proved. This did not meet their approval and they started a separate enterprise to teach this argument in a form that should not be criticized. This was not the style of 1843 advocates; they allowed the most rigid and thorough criticisms.”

Wendell and Bywater[4] started a small magazine entitled “The Watchman,” that survives as a two issues only. Their preaching “produced results and a small class endorsed the argument as a fact which none could refute. The public were told through press and pulpits that the Adventists had set another time leading many to suppose setting time was their chief business.”[5] Residual resentment lingered even after Wendell’s death. Members of the Seventh Day sect hated Bywater and all his Age-to-Come associates. Thirty years later, the Seventh-Day Adventist ‘historian’ J. N. Loughborough presented their Rochester, New York, meeting place as dirty and dusty and their theology as just as dark.[6]

The failure of his expectations for 1850 did not cure Wendell of the desire to divine from prophetic mathematics the date of Christ’s Second Advent. He was soon as positive about the date 1854 as he had been about 1850. He was “very sanguine in the correctness of the chronological data given, as reaching to ‘the end of the days,’ and the time of the promised blessing. The time passing without a realization of the expected event, his ‘faith failed him,’ as a result of overweening confidence in human computations of time, and human misapplication of data divinely given; and he turned aside from ‘the word,’ and got out of ‘the way,’ and for several years ‘went astray.’”[7]

The 1854 movement was characterized by “Age to Come” views and by a rejection of the idea that the wicked would be resurrected.[8] It was the founding event of the Advent Christian Church, though most of their historians minimize that truth. The primary voice behind the 1854 prediction was Jonathan Cummings who was deeply involved in the Millerite movement. In 1852 Isaac Wellcome viewed the whole matter with considerable distaste:

It would be quite improper to neglect such a prominent point in the history of an institution so important as this has now become because it had a rude beginning, and the task is unpleasant. In 1852 Eld. Jonathan Cummings, one of the ministers of the Advent body in earlier days, claimed to have obtained new light on the commencement and terminus of the periods of Daniel, He was ambitious, aspiring, erratic, with a good degree of eloquence, an air of knowledge and self sufficiency, and a very defiant dogmatic spirit well calculated to gain disciples. He began to teach that the … 1335 days would end and bring the resurrection in a.d. 1854. Those who had long looked and anxiously waited for the return of their Lord and the many who had through their constant labors and God's developments of signs of the impending judgment been brought to unite in the same expectation were interested in any argument which seemed to give evidence as to the time of deliverance and final redemption. A large proportion of them had never gone through a time movement or thoroughly examined a time argument, and but a limited number were competent to decide such a matter after they had heard all that could be said upon it. But the fact that they had ears to hear and hearts anxious to learn what they could about the return of the Lord is highly commendatory to their affections for Christ. They loved his appearing but this fact should not justify any one in tantalizing them with unreliable testimony as to the time of his coming, nor should it deter any faithful teacher from dissuading them from relying upon such evidences as are without foundation. … [The] leaders in this movement were positive beyond the possibility of doubt;’ … Men with such views teach as infallible guides. What they teach must be true for the Lord has given the distinguishing gift and sent them to announce a divine fact, and such were their feelings and the authority with which they taught.[9]

The 1854 Movement was disastrous for many. Wellcome estimated that one in fifty of the fragmented Adventist body participated in the movement. However, he consistently downplays participation in “definite time movements,” and one may safely suppose the percentage to have been much higher. Wellcome recalled that “some of the leading time brethren became doubtful as to the whole theme, and the most of these turned their attention to secular employments while others became convinced that the position occupied by the main body of Adventists was the Scriptural one, viz. that the consecutive fulfillment of prophecy shows conclusively that we are in the closing days of the gentile times.”

Jonas Wendell was among those who faltered. Though he seems to have left no written record of his reasons for becoming inactive, they are plain enough. He invested several years of his life to prophetic speculations that proved unfounded. His own dogmatism in the 1850 Movement and the self-serving identification of Cummings and his principal associates as divinely guided messengers could produce no other reaction in a person with any sense left. Stetson’s obituary of Wendell explains: “He was committed to … ‘the 1854 movement,’ and was very sanguine in the correctness of the chronological data given …. The time passing without a realization of the expected event, his ‘faith failed him,’ as a result of overweening confidence in human computations of time, and human misapplication of data divinely given; and he turned aside from ‘the word,’ and got out of ‘the way,’ and for several years ‘went astray.’”[10]

Even if Wellcome underestimates the proportion of Adventists involved in the 1854 Movement, he does not exaggerate the fanaticism of those involved. A very brief article in the February 24, 1854, issue of The Skaneateles, New York, Democrat recounts a winter-time baptism of the movement’s converts: “The Salem Gazette says that notwithstanding that the mercury was from 6 to 8 degrees below zero [Fahrenheit] on Sunday morning, several converts to the Second Adventists were baptized by immersion that forenoon – sufficient opening in the ice being found between Phillip’s wharf and Hawthorne’s Point.”

Wendell moved to Edinboro, Pennsylvania and settled there sometime before 1865. Wendell descendants would continue to live in Edenboro into the 1890’s at least. C. B. Turner, who had been converted to Adventism by Wendell, “becoming acquainted with these facts … came to Edenboro in the winter of 1864-1865, and proved instrumental in Bro. Wendell's recovery and restoration.” Wendell returned to preaching primarily in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and New England. Notices of his itinerary appear in various issues of The World’s Crisis. He came to Pittsburgh, and Russell found him preaching in Quincy Hall in Allegheny; the Adventists meeting there were one of several groups to whom the hall was rented.

The Allegheny-Pittsburgh Congregation

There is no indication of the Allegheny/Pittsburgh congreagation’s size, but Second Adventists had a strong presence in Pennsylvania extending back to the Millerite Movement. In the first years they faced considerable ridicule from the press which expressed opposition in varying shades. Sometimes satire was used; sometimes outright ridicule or an expression of deep concern for those affected by Millerism was expressed.[11] There is little history for the congregation in Allegheny and Pittsburgh. It comes into our notice in late 1871, when George Stetson was called as its pastor. A letter from Stetson to The Advent Christian Witness dates his service there to about October 1869.[12]

The congregation seems to have been quite small and neglected. Stetson mentions a “schism” in the congregation, though he doesn’t say what caused it. The suggestion that Russell was the cause is made by an opposer with a speculative turn of mind. There is no support for this in the record, and it doesn’t fit the facts as known.

Russell found both the congregation and Wendell congenial company. He plied Wendell with many questions. Some answers satisfied him and some were less than satisfying, even confusing. Their conversations addressed the issue of God’s justice and eternal torment and introduced him to prophetic studies. He returned to his Bible. Here is how he remembered it: “Though his Scripture exposition was not entirely clear, and though it was very far from what we now rejoice in, it was sufficient, under God, to re-establish my wavering faith in the divine inspiration of the Bible, and to show that the records of the apostles and prophets are indissolubly linked. What I heard sent me to my Bible to study with more zeal and care than ever before, and I shall ever thank the Lord for that leading.”[13]

Russell’s statement isn’t as vague as it first appears. His faith in the divine inspiration of the Bible was shaken by his experience with the death of near relatives, including his mother and by the massive loss of life attendant on the Civil War. He saw first hand the results of mass death when the Arsenal exploded. Though is nephew Rufus Wendell was more noted for debating the issue of inherent immortality, Jonas Wendell knew the arguments as well as any Second Adventist. Typically a conversation with a member of the Advent Christian Association or one of the cognate movements was based on a series of questions for which Bible verses provided answers. It is a safe assumption that Russell’s conversations with Wendell followed the same pattern.

Henry Francis Carpenter, who had been briefly interested in the Barbourite movement,[14] produced a guide to Bible questions, and it gives us the best access to what their conversation must have included. It will remind anyone familiar with it of the later Watchtower publication Make Sure of All Things. Some of the questions proposed and then answered with a Bible verse are:

[1] Russell, C. T.: Harvest Siftings and Gatherings, Zion’s Watch Tower, July 15, 1906, page 229.
[2] Stetson, G.: In Memory of Elder Jonas Wendell, The World’s Crisis, September 10, 1873
e Wellcome, Isaac: History of the Second Advent Message and Mission, Doctrine and People, Advent Christian Publication Society, Boston, 1874, pages 305-306.
[4] Bywater also published a booklet in 1852 entitled The Mystery Solved; or a Bible Expose of the Spirit Rapping.s, Showing That They Are Not Caused by the Spirits of the Dead, but by Evil Demons, or Devils (Rochester, N.Y.: Advent Harbinger Office, 1852);. It was an anti-spiritualist publication that attributed the abilities of psychic mediums to electricity and the work of demons.
[5] Wellcome, page 585-586.
[6] .Loughborough, J. N.: Recollections of the Past – No. 2, Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, February 12, 1884, page 107.
[7] Stetson, G.: In Memory of Elder Jonas Wendell, The World’s Crisis, September 10, 1873
[8] White, E. G. Spiritual Gifts – Vols. III-IV, Trustees of Ellen G. White Publications, pages 152-153. “Some who were in the 1854 movement have brought along with them erroneous views, such as the non-resurrection of the wicked, and the future age, and they are seeking to unite these views and their past experience with the message of the third angel.”
[9] Wellcome, pages 594-596.
[10] Stetson, G.: In Memory of Elder Jonas Wendell, The World’s Crisis, September 10, 1873
[11] Examples of press opposition in the Millerite era are found in A. Spencer Brahm: The Piladelphia Press and the Millerites, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, April 1954, page 189ff.
[12] Letter from George Stetson: The Advent Christian Witness, August 27, 1872: “It is now ten months since I was called and came to Pittsburgh, Pa. to labor.”
[13] Russell, C. T.: Harvest Sifftings and Gatherings, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1890, pages 3-4.
[14] Schulz, B. W. and R. M. de Vienne: Nelson Barbour: The Millennium’s Forgotten Prophet, Fluttering Wings Press via Lulu.com, 2009, pages 54-55.

More on J. T. Ongley

A letter from Ongley appears in the April 1874 issue of Bible Examiner. It shows him to be sharing a ministry with C. F. Sweet. Sweet in turn was a friend of Owen Russell Croizer and both were known to Barbour.

The letter, signed by both Sweet and Ongley, shows that they were engaged in a tent ministry in Pennsylvania and New York. They had just published two pamphlets written by Sweet. Sweets and Ongley also associated with William Spencer of Rochester who also comes in for mention in Nelson Barbour: The Millennium’s Forgotten Prophet.

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Request for Help and an Editorial of Sorts

George D. Clowes is a mystery. It took two days to come up with his first name and middle initial. Clowes was a disfellowshipped by the Methodists when he espoused Second Adventist views. He served as Pastor of the small Second Advent congregation in Pittsburgh. He seems to be the same as the George Darby Clowes (senior) who was born in England in 1818, but this is uncertain.

We now need solid information about “brother Clowes.” Is there anyone in the Pittsburgh area willing to look for his obituary? He died January 25, 1889. It should be possible to find it.

We thought researching Nelson Barbour’s history was difficult. Researching Russell’s life between 1869 and 1878 is exponentially more difficult. Material we need is denied us by library policy. I cannot travel. Our funds are limited. We know where some things are, we just can’t see them.

There is key material that should see the light of day. It will enlarge, even change, our view of these years, but we cannot see it because the libraries involved do not loan out microfilms. I understand their caution. It leaves me no less frustrated.

Getting help from another source is even more difficult. I won’t go into that in detail. It’s enough to say that there is a mass of material sitting in file cabinets in an archive “in the east” that few people will ever see.

If one is afraid that a full disclosure of the historical past will damage faith, perhaps one should re-evaluate the quality of their faith. First Century Christianity was not a secretive religion. No Christian body should be secretive. If you feel compelled to hide historical documents and records, your faith is weak. You have moral issues that you should resolve, and you have a self-view that is questionable. That people who formulate a paranoid archival policy are seen as leaders, as pillars, amazes me. I share your faith. But I don’t share your paranoid fears. If you could locate this material, so can I, and I will publish it either on this blog or in print.

In the mean time, I’m rereading issues of the Bible Examiner for 1874 and 1875. I’m interested in the repeated discussion of Universal Salvation. All the issues that plagued the readers of Zion’s Watch Tower in its first decade were current among the larger Second Adventist movement. The history of Zion’s Watch Tower is usually told without reference to contemporary events. This is bad history.

Another problem is that Watch Tower history is usually told from a Russell-centric point of view. This is a mistake. [I’ve been having this discussion with one of my regular blog-readers, so I’m moving it to the posts section.] Because most of the useable material on Russell was written by those who admire him, sometimes inordinately so, these ‘histories’ have omitted key individuals, such as Joshua Tavender and George D. Clowes. (If you don’t read this blog, you will have no clue who Joshua Tavender was or what he did or his relationship to Russell.)

I seldom editorialize. Consider this post an exception. Our research is not meant to undermine anyone’s faith. Our sole interest is in a complete, well-documented story, even if some heroes of faith are revealed to be uncertain, occasionally mistaken, sometimes less than the honorable men we otherwise know them to be. The Bible does not hesitate to reveal faults. No historian should.

The more we research, the more Rachael and I are convinced that Watch Tower history remains un-explored and untold. Isn’t it time to change this?

First bit of chapter two

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Bridegroom Cometh

Even if the 1860's are mostly undocumented, leaving us with details of his scientific pursuits but not of his evangelism, he tells us that he was actively promoting his millennial views. His message reached a William Valentine of Albany, New York, about 1865 or 1866. One can safely presume that he continued to write letters and engage in personal evangelism, and he probably attended conferences and camp meetings though the earliest reference to Barbour addressing a conference thus far located is a report on The New York Advent Christian Conference held in March 1871.

He wrote something in 1868, apparently an article for one of the Adventist publications because he differentiates it from a later pamphlet. What ever it was he wrote, his reasoning drew muted criticism from William Sheldon. Sheldon, writing the same year, felt that “1873 has less evidence in its favor than 1868.”1

Barbour seems to have also evangelized his professional contacts. Among his followers and associates were at least three inventors, Edwin Lampkin, George B. Stacy, and S. White Paine, and there was apparently more than one physician. Benjamin W. Keith also had some connection to engineering and invention. He witnessed a patent issued to Charles F. Davis of Auburn, New York for improvements in grain-drills in 1868.2 Interestingly, Paine was also a composer and poet.

The Rochester Union and Advertiser biography says Barbour preached in England, and it may have been while back in London in 1864-1865 regarding his invention that he preached there.
One of his British supporters, Elias Helton Tuckett, Baptist pastor of the Priory Church, Exeter, wrote an article entitled “Behold the Bridegroom Cometh” which was published in the April 1, 1865, issue of The Rainbow. The article doesn’t mention Barbour by name, nor does it mention the 1873 date, but later articles connect both Tuckett’s 1865 article and himself to Barbour.3

Tuckett wrote: “The cry is now being uttered throughout all Christendom, ‘Behold, the Bridegroom cometh,’ and in this fact we read one of the especial signs that He will not much longer tarry. ... We believe these last years are imminently impending. There is a growing impression that great changes are at hand; every one feels that the times are critical; society everywhere is disturbed; symptoms of mysterious events meet us on every hand.” He concluded that Christians should entreat the unconverted “to consider these things ere it is too late.”

Other, less defined testimonies came from Barbour and his supporters. “There are other documents, and living witnesses,” he wrote, “that this ‘cry’ has been persistently maintained until the present time.”4

During this period he communicated with B. W. Keith,5 Daniel Cogswell,6 and Millerites he had known as a young man. Barbour contacted Keith in 1867, and Keith was immediately interested. He would write that he had “been studying the time question since 1867, and ... associated with the movement ... since the above date; and still accepts all the legitimate conclusions to be drawn from them.”7 Barbour lectured at North Adams, Massachusetts in 1871 explaining his conviction that the 6000 years of man’s creation and the 1335 Days of Daniel’s prophecy both ended in 1873. John H. Paton, newly switched from being a Baptist clergyman to being an Advent Christian pastor, also supported Barbour, joining the Barbourite movement sometime in late 1873 or early 1874.8

Barbour had two significant problems: There was a growing resistance to “definite time” speculations,9 and there were competing prophetic schemes that had already captured the fancy of Advent Christians and other Second Adventists. Michael Paget Baxter says in his small booklet The Great Crisis at the Period of 1867 to 187510 that there were more than a hundred expositors pointing to Christ’s return between those dates. Illustrative of this dichotomy is an article on the Alton Bay Camp Meeting held in September 1871. A reporter for The New York Times wrote:

The repeated failures of Miller and his followers, in having the earth destroyed on a stated day and hour, has, I infer, made the faithful much more cautious in their predictions of late years. There is still a faction in the fold of those who are called “Time-ists,” some of whom scorn the daily affairs of life, and literally or metaphorically busy themselves only with the preparation of their ascension robes. I must not forget to mention in this connection that, in what appeared to be a large reception tent near the depot, I saw suspended a most curious, cabalistic looking chart, having painted on it in strongly contrasted colors, winged lions and horned lions, rams and goats, stars and crosses, and a seven headed dragon in bright red, all interspersed with words, Babylon, Grecia, Medo-Persia and other names of ancient history, together with many numbers, scripture quotations and chronological fragments -- the whole having evidently been the pet work of some zealous “time-ist.” From all I could learn, however, the great majority of “Adventists” content themselves with the general assertion that the time for the second appearance of Christ is at hand, without attempting to specify its exact date.11

Though the tendency was growing, the Times reporter overstates “Second Adventist” rejection of time speculations. Many of the ‘Time-ists’ drew Second Adventist interest, but Barbour’s principal rival was William C. Thurman.

Unlike Barbour’s speculations, those of Thurman gained almost immediate acceptance. When forced to mention a competing date-system it is Thurman’s that Barbour must refute, though he doesn’t always mention it by name. Sometimes he merely mentions Thurman’s calculations.12

William C. Thurman wrote that he was rescued from “an infidel’s death” by the teaching of William Miller.13 If Thurman meant he participated in or was convinced by the 1843 movement, he was quite young, only thirteen or fourteen.

1. Letter from Wm. Valentine to Nelson Barbour, Herald of the Morning, August 1875, page 47. “Having embraced the substance of your views some ten years since, it is doubly gratifying to me to find one so willing to impart them to others.” Barbour wrote: “I began to publish on these precious themes as early as 1868.” (Barbour, N. H.: Questions and Answers, The Herald of the Morning, August 1879, page 27-28.) He differentiates this from the later publication of Evidence for the Coming of the Lord. -- Barbour, N. H.: “Our Lamps Are Gone Out,” The Herald of the Morning, September 1879, page 34.
Sheldon, William: Adventism: What is it? Its Relationship to Theology and Prophecy, Western Advent Christian Publishing Association, Buchanan, Michigan, 1868, page 233.

2. Edwin Lambkin’s letter to Barbour appears in the August 1875 issue of The Herald of the Morning, page 46. Lambkin held two patents (No. 172456 dated 1875 and No. 223928 dated 1880) for mechanical devices. Lambkin, listed as a farmer in the 1880 Census, lived in Can, Michigan, at the time he wrote Barbour. He was born October 4, 1832, in Vermont and died May 23, 1905, in Michigan. He is listed in Transactions of The Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Michigan, 1883, page 144.
George B. Stacy, a Virginia farmer, held two patents (No. 88092 dates 1869 and No.108532 dated 1870) for agricultural equipment improvements. More on Stacy appears later.
A letter from Seth White Paine of Rochester appears in the August 1878 issue of The Herald of the Morning on pages 28-30. He wrote at least one article for The Herald of the Morning. Pain held many patents on items as diverse as shot cartridges, agricultural implements, industrial equipment, and a shoe lasting machine. Pain had been a Millerite; he died August 9, 1895. (Timothy Hopkins: The Kelloggs in the Old World and the New, Sunset Press, San Francisco, 1903, page 430.)
The patent witnessed by B. W. Keith is Improvement in Grain-Drills, Patent No. 74,515, dated February 18, 1868. There is another patent witnesses by a B. W. Keith: United States Patent Office: Stephen A. Morse, of East Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Improved Collet. Letters Patent No. 42,592 dated May 3, 1864. The B. W. Keith of Massachusetts was a different individual.
Edward H. King’s letter to Barbour also appears in the August 1875 issue. King was a Homeopathic physician who began his practice in Iowa in 1867, and associated with Dr. C. H. Cogswell. He served as a Lieutenant in Iowa Brigade during the Civil War. (William Harvey King: History of Homeopathy and its Institutions in America, as transcribed at: http://homeoint.org/history/king/1‑32.htm; Jonathan Pipes - Company “C” 15th Iowa Volunteer Infantry Last Updated on April 15, 2001; retrieved from: http://www.pipesfamily. om/jonathan.htm)
3. Tuckett, E. H.: “The Bridegroom Cometh,” The Rainbow: A Magazine of Christian Literature, April 1, 1865, pages 157-163; The End of the Dispensation, October 1, 1874, pages 457-461. Probable Time of the Second Advent (Part II), September 1877, page 422. Tuckett’s full name appears in the 1881 British Census where he is described as retired Baptist minister. His age is given as sixty-six. He is also listed a one-time pastor of the Baptist Church at Kingsbridge in Sarah Prideaux Fox’s Kingsbridge and its Surroundings, the author, Plymouth, 1874, page 81.
4. Barbour, N. H.: Evidence for the Coming of the Lord in 1873, page 34.
5. Keith saw Civil War service with the 19th New York Cavalry. He enrolled as a sergeant in Company B and ended his service as a command sergeant. (National Archives Microfilm Number M551 roll 74.) He was born in Ossian, New York, August 24, 1835, and married Fanny Foster, August 28, 1867, in Dansville, New York. He is listed as a minister in the 1880 Census. In later life he moved to Harvey, Illinois, where his son was associate editor and business manager of The Tribune-Citizen. (Frederick Clifton Price: Foster Genealogy: Being the Posterity of Reginald Foster, W. B. Coney Co., Chicago, 1889, Part 2, page 629-630.) He spent his last years, at least from 1905, in The Illinois Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home in Quincy, Illinois. (Note in Keith’s hand on title page of his personal copy of Emphatic Diaglott, author’s collection.) He died in 1916 or 1917. (Dragoons Together in Annual Reunion, The Rochester, New York, Democrat and Chronicle, September 7, 1917, page 15.) Keith was active in the GAR and held office in the local Grand Army lodge. (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, December 15, 1890.) He was a delegate to a prohibition convention held at Geneseo, New York in 1890 (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, September 29, 1891, page 5)
6. Cogswell was born September 5, 1817, in Oneida County, New York, and died on a trip with Barbour June 22, 1876. Barbour preached at his funeral.
7. Keith, B. W.: Suntelia, Therismos, Parousia, Zion’s Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s Presence, May 1881, reprints pages 222-223.
8. The lecture in North Adams, Massachusetts is mentioned in a letter from H. W. Brown to Nelson Barbour found in the December 1878 issue of Herald of the Morning, page 96.
In an untitled note appended to J. H. Paton’ article “Who Will Raise the Dead,” The Herald of the Morning, March 1879, page 53. Barbour addresses Paton, writing: “You have made great progress in the shining pathway the last four or five years.” Barbour quotes a letter from Paton that appeared in Midnight Cry and Herald of the Morning in fall of 1874 which said he found Barbour’s arguments “at least viable.” This was the first appearance of Paton’s name in The Herald. (Barbour, N. H.: The Elijah Type: Part Second, The Herald of the Morning, April 1881, page 55.) In the March 1898 issue of The Herald, Barbour says, “Eld. J. H. Paton became interested in 1873-4 mainly by reading the papers I sent to him.” (Barbour, N. H.: Parable of the Ten Virgins, The Herald of the Morning, March 1898, page 368.) Paton started preaching as an Advent Christian Elder in 1872 and became a Barbourite lecturer in 1875. – J. H. Paton: Autobiography of John H. Paton, Typescript Manuscript, 1915; The Editor’s Experience as publisher, The World’s Hope Supplement, February 1, 1890.
9. e.g.: “The majority of the Second Adventists, at their late General Convention in Springfield, Mass., agreed on the general doctrine of the second coming of Christ soon, but concluded to give up trying to fix the time.” -- Untitled Article, The Utica, New York, Daily Observer, April 7, 1869.
10. London, 1866, page 1.
11. J. G. N.: Millerite Camp Meeting, The New York Times, September 23, 1871.
12. See these Crisis articles: Barbour, N. H: “Evidences For the Coming of the Lord in 1873,” October 16, 1872; “Bible Chronology - Part II,” November 20, 1872; “Evidences For the Coming of the Lord in 1873,” January 8, 1873. See also Barbour, N. H.: The Jubilee, The Midnight Cry and Herald of the Morning, Volume 1, Number 4, March 1874, page 54, where Barbour outlines some of his specific criticisms of Thurman’s chronological speculations.
13. Thurman, W. C.: To the Christian World, Published by the Author, Virginia, 1877, page 1 as cited by Donald F. Durnbaugh: “How Long the Vision?” -- William C. Thurman and his Adventist Following, Brethren Life and Thought, Volume 46, Numbers 1 and 2, Winter/Spring Issue, 2001, pages 51-79. Much of the material here presented is derived from Durnbaugh’s excellent article. Assume all material on Thurman to come from this source unless otherwise noted.

Extract from first chapter ...

of Nelson Barbour: The Millennium's Forgotten Prophet. Now available here:

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1. Inventions and Discoveries

Nelson Barbour’s life spanned a goodly portion of American history. He was born when the last of the Revolutionary War veterans were passing. The house where he was born was lighted with tallow candles or whale oil lamps. Meals were cooked in an open fire place.

When he was born most of the lands of the Louisiana Purchase were the province of native civilizations, with almost no Euro-American settlement. He was not quite four years old when construction started on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. He was about forty-six when the last spike was driven at Promontory Point, Utah, and America was joined coast to coast by rails. When he began his academy education there were twenty-six states. At his death there were forty-five, and much of the wilderness was tamed, farmed, even industrialized.

He was about thirty-eight when the Civil War ignited. He lived through the Hard Times of the late 1830’s, the great post war depression of the 1870’s and the tragic depression of the 1890’s. He saw the labor wars of the 1870’s and early 1880’s. He saw Federal troops fire on American workers during the railroad strike at Pittsburgh in 1877. He saw the industrialization of America, watching it transition from cottage industry and agriculture to become the world’s greatest industrial power.

He lived through the impeachment of Johnson, the scandals of the Grant administration and the torturous Reconstruction years. He saw the gasification and electrification of major cities. He saw the first iron hulled ships and the transition from sails to steam. He saw the first automobiles, and he saw the telephone become common. He saw these events with eyes focused on them as proofs that Christ’s rule was near.

Nelson Barbour’s family settled in New York early in the Colonial Era. Barbour’s father purchased a homestead in Throopsville, near Auburn, New York, in 1801. By the time Barbour was born on August 21, 1824, Throopsville was a small manufacturing village. His closest living relative, a half-uncle lived there, and when Barbour died in 1905 of “exhaustion” he was buried there.

Though the usual references to her are as “Mrs. Barbour” or “Mrs. N. H. Barbour,” he was married in 1876 to Emeline, maiden name unknown. Emeline B. Barbour was born in September 1831 and died while on a trip to Florida on November 20, 1901. The Library of Congress catalogue suggests that his middle name was Homer. This is incorrect. His middle name was Horatio and is so noted on the British patent for one of his inventions.

A newspaper article appearing in The Auburn, New York, Citizen of October 30, 1905, makes it clear that Barbour was related to and probably the younger brother of Delecta Barbour Lewis, the radical anti-saloon crusader. That would make Friend Barbour his father.

Both Friend Barbour and his wife were interested in the Temperance Movement, and letters from and about them appear in various New York newspapers. Barbour’s mother, assuming that the newspaper article hasn’t misled us, was “a woman of remarkable endowments and fine educational attainments.” Noted in her early life “for her accomplishments,” she “became a well recognized oracle in the neighborhood.”

A brief description of Friend Barbour and his family appears in Mary F. Eastman’s Biography of Dio Lewis:

Friend Barbour was one of the largest men, weighing three hundred pounds. He was well-proportioned, of erect carriage, and of great strength of body and mind. His voice was so loud and clear that he never used a horn to call his men, as was the custom, for his shout could be heard anywhere on his farm of seventy-five acres. … Dr. Peter Clark used to say that at a house-raising, when the frame was lifted with the cry of “he-ho heave!” he had heard Mr. Barbour’s voice a mile away.

He was a master builder and pushed work with such vigor that when … he wished to substitute a frame house for the log-house in which he lived, he moved his family into the church across the street on Monday morning, took away the log-house, built a new frame house with three rooms on the ground-floor, and moved his family into it on the next Saturday afternoon.

Other than a family move to Cohocton, New York, when Barbour was young, nothing is known about his life until he is fifteen and enrolled in Temple Hill Academy in Geneseo, New York. The Academy was founded in 1827 and chartered by the New York Legislature. It was “an institution combining classical instruction with that of the useful arts, and at a moderate expense.” The trustees promised “to throw around it those healthful, moral, and religious influences which cannot fail to inspire confidence in the minds of parents and guardians, and make it a seat of Literature and Science, as desirable, as its location is distinguished, for its grand and beautiful scenery.” Temple Hill’s management was eventually entrusted to the Presbyterians. Barbour attended from 1839 to 1842.

From his frequent use of illustrations drawn from engineering, the Doppler Effect, and scientific analysis one can, I believe, conclude that Barbour concentrated on the science curriculum. While there it is likely that he met Owen Russell Crozier who was four years older than Barbour, a school teacher and a student at the Methodist seminary at Lima, New York. Crozier belonged to the Amphictyonic Society, a debating society that met at Temple Hill Academy in 1842, and Crozier enrolled in Temple Hill in 1842.

[Photo of Crozier inserted here]

Barbour left his parent’s Presbyterian religion and “united with the Methodist Episcopal Church” at Geneseo. He began studying for the Methodist ministry “under Elder Ferris.” Elder Ferris is otherwise unnamed, but he appears to be William H. Ferris, a prominent member of the New York Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and a representative to the church’s annual national conferences. Ferris was one of the founders of Drew Theological Seminary and is named in the charter.

[Photo of Methodist Church in Geneseo inserted here]

That William H. Ferris was Barbour’s teacher is only an educated guess. Whoever Elder Ferris was, Barbour’s association with him was brief. “Having been brought up among Presbyterians” a newspaper profile says, “and having an investigating turn of mind, instead of quietly learning Methodist theology he troubled his teacher with questions of election, universal salvation, and many other subjects, until it was politely hinted that he was more likely to succeed in life as a farmer than as a clergyman.”

Barbour told The Rochester, New York, Union and Advertiser that he began preaching independently when he was nineteen. What impelled Barbour into “independent” preaching was conversion to Millerism. There is no detailed narrative of his conversion, and we are left to piece the story together the best we can. Crozier says that a Mr. Johnson, a Millerite evangelist, lectured at Geneseo in the winter of 1842. Though Crozier paid little attention to Johnson’s message, by mid summer 1843, he was actively spreading Millerite end-times predictions, lecturing at the Canandaigua school house and elsewhere. Barbour, and Daniel Cogswell from Dansville, about 21 miles from Geneseo, also spread the Millerite message. It is apparent from the biographical sections of Barbour’s Midnight Cry booklet that Miller’s end-times calculations struck his fancy and convinced him. He saw them as flawless, inarguable conclusions. He memorized the math and the chronology upon which the calculations were based, and for fifteen years after the 1843/4 disappointment he could find no error in them, though the failure was self-evident.

Barbour gives us one snippet of his experiences as an active Millerite. He recalled that every Adventist had a Bible “in his hand or pocket, ready for immediate use. It must have been a small gathering for those days, where, if a preacher quoted or misquoted a text, his ear was not saluted by the rustling of a hundred volumes.”

In 1843, at the time appointed, Millerites in the Geneseo and surrounding areas gathered in Springwater at the home of “Captain [Parker H.] Pierce near the center of the town with its huge lawn.” The group there took the name “House of Judgment.” One source estimates that twenty or more attended the gathering, and, considering Barbour’s close association with H. F. Hill, who was one of the principal speakers, it is likely he attended.

Reports of Ascension Robes are suspect and the incident of the burned haystack is apocryphal, but an article published much later recalled the events this way:

History records that the little band of faithful met and prepared for their ascension in robes of white. The sun went down as usual but many continued to sing and pray far into the night.

Many amusing incidents are related of the event. One concerns a smart prank played by the young men of the village who encircled a farmer in a wide wreath of burning hay as he slept. When aroused by the village urchins, the old farmer opened his eyes and seeing the fire about him exclaimed:

“In Hell. - Just as I expected.”

Millerite opponents reacted violently to the 1843/4 failure. Joseph Marsh reported after the “seventh month” disappointment of 1844, that the Second Adventist Church at Ithaca was burned. In Scottsville, near Rochester, New York, “the seats of their place of meeting were taken outside and burned.” The Adventist Tabernacle at Danville, Broome County, New York was torn down. “Br. Johnson is in Springwater and Br. [Henry F.] Hill at Geneseo, well engaged in comforting the people of God,” he wrote.

Barbour felt the 1843 disappointment keenly. While he doesn’t describe his feelings at length, he later wrote: “We held together until the autumn of 1844. Then, as if a raft floating in deep water should suddenly disappear from under its living burden, so our platform went from under us, and we made for shore in every direction; but our unity was gone, and, like drowning men, we caught at straws.” On another occasion he wrote: “The ‘43 movement ending as it did, in disappointment and fanaticism, has brought reproach,” and he felt as if he were in the “very sink of that reproach.” He wrote of his “long years of disappointment and waiting,” saying they had taught him to “mistrust human ability” to unravel the Bible’s time-prophecies.

[photo of William Miller inserted here]

In one of his more poignant statements on the 1843/4 disappointment, he said: “Disappointments may be bitter; that of 1843 was exceedingly so to me; and I have never seen an argument that satisfied me since then, until the four strong arguments which God has given for 1873. The eating of that ‘open book’ in the 1843 message was sweet. O what love, what unity, what strong faith we then had! But the digestion was to be bitter. The disappointment followed; and those who passed through it will never forget the bitterness of that cup.”

Barbour doesn’t tell us if he participated in any of the time-setting movements through 1854. Though his “we caught at straws” remark suggests that he did, a later statement seems to indicate he remained aloof from them.

He describes himself as “almost in despair,” and as one “who had lost his religion, and been for many years in total darkness.” He meant that he was in darkness as to the time of Christ’s advent, not that he abandoned Christianity. “It seemed almost as if God’s word had failed,” he told his readers. “We were in darkness on this subject; our unity was gone; discord and confusion seemed to reign; and these things have continued, more or less, until the present time.”

Barbour became a physician sometime after the Millerite disappointment. He is listed as a physician in a Rochester, New York, city directory, and he is often called Dr. Barbour. It appears that Temple Hill Academy offered courses related to medicine. A biographical sketch of another graduate mentions his “two year course” at Temple Hill, and says that medicine was “the only profession open to his limited means.” Any course work was followed by training under the guidance of a practicing physician. Another biographical sketch tells of a graduate of Temple Hill following up his education there with a year’s medical reading under a James A. West, M.D. Barbour may have followed a similar course, perhaps studying under Doctor Lewis McCarthy of Throopsville. It is more likely that he trained at the Metropolitan Medical College in New York City. The college provided training in Botanic and Electric medicine. The building that quartered it had a connection to a Second Adventist congregation, and at one point Barbour lived near it.

In the 1850’s Barbour sought his fortune in the Australian gold fields. Other than his trip home, there are no details of this adventure. The only definitive statement on it is found in an 1879 supplement to Zion’s Watch Tower, and all it says is that Barbour was a gold miner and that he was then “entirely uninterested” in Bible prophecy. If Barbour sought his fortune in the Australian gold fields, the results were indifferent. He seems never to have had any appreciable wealth and was, perhaps, not a good steward of the money he had. His disinterest seems to be limited to the scope of predictive prophetic studies. His claim to have preached in many of the Australian colonies fits no other time in his life.

Barbour returned from Australia, setting sail in 1859 and taking the route around Africa to the United Kingdom. For Barbour the return voyage was life changing. He fell into a Bible discussion with a clergyman. “To wile away the monotony of a long sea voyage, the English chaplain proposed a systematic reading of the prophecies,” Barbour remembered.

In Barbour’s assent to the chaplain’s suggestion we see something of the “peculiar combination of the lion and the lamb” in his personality attributed to him by an associate. He “readily assented,” no doubt because he remained interested, but primarily because “having been a Millerite in former years, he knew right well there were arguments it would puzzle the chaplain to answer, even though the time has past.” There is a certain perverse deviousness in his motive, but there may also have been an acute desire to discover wherein Miller had erred.

He took the Millerite failure as a personal failure because he had invested his faith and life in the movement and because he could find no underlying error. He found a sense of personal validity as a Millerite and mourned the loss of significance and belonging it gave him. He suggested that accepting his interpretations re-validated Miller and his movement.

When Barbour and the clergyman read and discussed Daniel 12:7, Barbour felt a sense of revelation. He “saw what he had never seen before, though he had read it a hundred times.”

Nelson Barbour

It's out:

It's a limited interest academic book, hence this form of publication. If it sells well enough to warrant it, it will go on Amazon. Nearly four years of research, numerous cups of coffee and many, may conference calls -- and it's finally done.

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/nelson-barbour-the-millenniums-forgotten-prophet/7645313