In Search of Delmont Jones

by Jerome

Rachael kindly sent me a family tree for Albert Delmont Jones, which was far more extensive than the one I had put together from Ancestry. I understand the original research was done by “Ton” who is greatly missed. Because there are rather a lot of Delmont Jones names in this article, our main quarry, the editor of Zion’s Day Star, will hereafter just be referred to as ADJ.

The family tree sent me in search of records on the Find a Grave site. If you type in Delmont Jones and Pennsylvania you will find five different Delmont Jones listed. Due to research errors and misunderstandings, these five names only relate to three people – ADJ’s grandfather, father, and younger brother. ADJ’s first wife’s grave is also on the site if you know where to look as is one of his children, also an Albert D Jones. Alas, I have not traced ADJ himself. But one wonders, with his chequered history, under what name he finally went under?

 So, first the grandfather. Three of the Find a Grave entries relate to him! There are two entries for a Delmont Jones, b. August 3, 1803. One has him dying on December 30, 1878 and an almost duplicate record states December 29. They have him buried in the Turner Cemetery on Squirrel Hill, Allegheny County. This location was originally correct. Census returns for Peebles Township (Squirrel Hill) and old maps show the original Delmont Jones owning farming land in this area. It was eventually annexed into Pittsburgh in 1868.

 The Turner Cemetery still exists, but is only half an acre in size and was abandoned around 1880 when the church beside it that maintained it was closed. As a result, a number of those buried there were later moved. This included the first Delmont Jones, who was one of the last to be buried there. He was reinterred at the Homewood Cemetery in Pittsburgh on 25 March 1899. This was quite a common practice. As small community graveyards closed and the land often reused for other purposes, many families had relatives transferred to the new-style park-like cemeteries that were needed to cope with the dramatic increases in population. So there is a Find a Grave entry for Homewood Cemetery with a Delmont Jones, b. unknown, and died 1899 – which is a misunderstanding of what happened. On the other hand, this entry does show his gravestone with the correct date of death, 30 December 1878. It is likely that a gravestone was first placed at Turner cemetery and then moved with him, although this version looks of more recent origin.

Thanks are due to Find a Grave correspondent Rich who kindly gave me permission to reproduce the photograph at the head of this article, and also checked out the details of the discrepancy. One mystery - there was another Jones, this time a Watson Jones who was moved from Turner to Homewood on the same day, transported in the same container, and reinterred in the same grave as Delmont. Watson Jones died from epilepsy in 1866 aged 25. However, this does not link up with any known names in the Delmont Jones family tree. Perhaps they were moved together and reburied together, just in case. However, only Delmont’s name appears on the gravestone.

 Next, we come to the second Delmont Jones, son of Delmont Jones (Mark 1), and the father of ADJ. This Delmont Jones was born in Squirrel Hill, Allegheny, 1831 and died in 1894. His wife’s obituary describes him as a well-known Civil War veteran who served as an engineer in the United States Mississippi gunboat fleet. He and his wife Martha are buried in the South Side cemetery in Pittsburgh. This time thanks are due to Find a Grave correspondent Rob who gave permission for me to reproduce the photograph. The stone lists five names – Delmont Jones, his wife Martha Jones, and then the remaining surnames are of the Frasher family. One of this Delmont Jones’ daughters married a Frasher, so this will be her and some of her family.

Next, we come to the actual generation of ADJ. ADJ had a younger brother called – what a surprise – Delmont Jones again. This Delmont Jones (1874-1923) is buried in the Union Dale cemetery, Pittsburgh. Alas, there is not a stone, or at least a photograph of a stone, and it is unknown whether other members of the family were buried with him. The name Delmont Jones turns up in a number of Pittsburgh records, and likely relate to this Delmont rather than ADJ – although it is difficult to establish with certainty.

The Union Dale cemetery was also the final resting place for ADJ’s first wife. She is buried with her father and mother in the Bown family plot. The Jones name is mentioned because the inscription has her down as Caroline M Bown (1858-1933), wife of Albert D Jones. ADJ’s infant son, listed as Albert D Jones, born and died in 1883, is buried there with her. That is probably the only reason that ADJ is mentioned on the stone, since Caroline divorced him for infidelity after four children and around twelve years of marriage. One suspects that the D in the middle of the infant’s name is likely to be another Delmont.

Unfortunately I have not received permission to reproduce a photograph of this stone. If I subsequently obtain this, then I will adjust the article, but any reader sufficiently interested can easily check the Find a Grave site for themselves.

It would have been nice to have found a stone for ADJ and also a juicy obituary in some newspaper. Maybe they will still surface at some time.

(Note: as more recent posts have indicated, ADJ's final resting place is now known. He was buried in a Potter's Field cemetery, with just a small stone with a number on it. Most of the cemetery was obliterated when a freeway ramp was constructed in the late 1950s, early 1960s. It is rumored that many gangsters who disappeared are possibly buried under the freeway. In ADJ's case, it seems literally true. A long way from the leafy parklands of Pittsburgh cemeteries.)


Changing tack now, perhaps the most interesting point for me from the supplied genealogical records - as someone who has written on film history over the years, is a tenuous connection with the Roscoe Arbuckle scandal. Fatty Arbuckle was arrested and accused of rape and murder after a 1921 party in San Francisco. The victim was a small part actress named Virginia Rappe. The charge was subsequently reduced to manslaughter. Arbuckle went through two hung juries before being cleared at a third trial where the jury were out for all of six minutes, using five of them to write a statement making a formal apology to him for the injustice he had suffered.

There was little doubt that Virginia Rappe’s death was preventable. Health problems exacerbated by a series of abortions made her fragile, and she didn’t get prompt or proper care when taken ill. But the lurid accusations against Arbuckle all originated with Rappe’s companion who crashed the party, one Bambina Maud Delmont. While Wikipedia is not always the most accurate of sources, it does quite a nice line in character assassination with (quote) “Delmont had a long criminal record with multiple convictions for racketeering, bigamy, fraud, and extortion, and allegedly was making a living by luring men into compromising positions and capturing them in photographs, to be used as evidence in divorce proceedings.”  Her unsubstantiated testimony at the original hearing got Arbuckle indicted, but then the prosecution deliberately kept her far away from all the actual trials, because her obvious inability to tell truth from fiction would have immediately sunk their case.

The connection with Truth History? Maud had previously been the third Mrs ADJ. They married in 1904. That is where she obtained the Delmont name.

When you consider ADJ’s history after his “fall from grace” which will be detailed by Bruce and Rachael in the forthcoming volume, and then Maud’s colourful history, it would appear that some people just seem made for each other.

 Albeit briefly.

 

Communication - The Name of the Game

by Jerome

One of the keys I’ve found for researching history is to try to be a good communicator. That may mean sending dozens of expansive emails, or telephoning repositories and trying to befriend people the other end of the line.

Here are just a few examples as well as a review of some useful resources that others can use. It is not intended to be a scholarly article, more a series of personal experiences. As such I apologize in advance for a likely overdose of words like “I” and “me”.

Newspapers

Even today not all newspapers are online, and if they are, it is pot luck whether they are freely accessible or require you to take out a subscription. However, for the latter you can often sign up for a trial period and then hastily cancel. But a few years back there were two newspapers from the north of Scotland which had not made it onto internet databases. There was a debate on the subject of “future probation” between a Bible Student named Charles Houston and a local clergyman Donald Davidson that was mentioned in the pages of ZWT. (See ZWT reprints pages 1965, 1884 and 2278.) At the time the local papers wrote it all up in great detail, with a lot of local interest on both sides of the religious divide. I emailed the local library in Wick, Scotland, but got no response. So I telephoned and spoke at enthusiastic length to the librarian. He was most helpful and became quite hooked on this piece of local history. So he appointed a library assistant to - well, assist me. Over several months they painstakingly checked all the papers for me and scanned all the relevant bits and pieces. The results were several posts on this blog back in 2012 and a book on the subject that can still be obtained from Lulu. Just go to the Lulu site and punch in Houston-Davidson Debate.

That’s a blatant plug of course, but the download is free.

Internet sources

Never despise Google as a first port of call. For example, there is a family history site for the Paton family. They are a little wary of inquiries, but I managed to get in touch with a descendant of John H Paton who kindly sent me photographs of him, with permission to reproduce, and they have been on this blog. He also supplied a missing link in how the Almont Public Library obtained photocopies of Paton’s World’s Hope magazine. They had been offered to him for free several decades ago and he had turned down the offer. Which was a great shame. I am sure he would have shared them for free, whereas the library charged.

But do write to people and if you think there may be reticence there, be honest but speak soothingly and reassure them of your honorable intentions...

Libraries

Many are quite clued up now, which means they will only assist after a fashion for a fee. But as illustrated with the Houston-Davidson debate above, it doesn’t hurt to phone if an email doesn’t work. One of the available issues of A D Jones’ Day Star paper came from an exchange with an American library. I telephoned from UK using one of the companies that give you international calls for pennies and burbled enthusiastically away. And although the guy took my credit card, he photographed the paper and sent me the pdf and I never did get charged. About twenty-five years ago three missing years of Storrs’ Bible Examiner came my way on a free microfilm after a friendly correspondence with a college librarian. If only more libraries or library staff would be like that.

Ancestry

The beauty of genealogical sites, especially international ones like Ancestry, is that you can be put in touch with people researching the same family. Every time I find someone relevant to this blog I contact who appear to be living relatives. I am currently in dialog with descendants of Leslie Jones, the doctor who produced the convention reports and got involved in the Mena Film Company and their planned sequel to the Photodrama of Creation. A little while back there was debate over the early days of the Bible Students in Britain. A photograph captioned Tom Hart turned out to be his friend Jonathan Ling, but only because a descendant contacted through Ancestry sent other photographs, and there he was. So if you use Ancestry, do contact all those who have your quarry on their tree or on their interest list. Some will never reply, but many do.

Find a Grave

This is one of my favorite sites and I delve in under a different name quite regularly. That is not morbidity on my part, but accompanying records often supply key information Quite often those who have supplied the information for Find a Grave, or a photograph, can sometimes supply a lot more. It is pot luck what you may find, but the database is rapidly increasing. I discovered who had left association with the IBSA by seeing who conducted their funeral, which may outside the scope of this project, but of interest to me. Links from Find a Grave to Ancestry helped me produce an article three years ago on all the names inscribed on the pyramid monument by CTR’s grave, and who they were and what happened to them.

And again, we are back to the importance of friendly communication. I always contact the person who supplied the entry and also the photographer of the grave. And on every occasion barring one, they have got back to me. So there is information from a descendant on John A Bohnet, for an article that may one day see the light of day. I also solved what was a puzzle to me about Malcom, Joseph F Rutherford’s only son. Records seemed to suggest that he married more than once (consecutively not concurrently I hasten to add). But were these people actually his wives? The person who had taken individual photographs but not joined up the dots sufficiently for my liking very kindly went back to the cemetery for me and photographed the graves together.

Malcom Rutherford WAS married twice and is buried beside both of his wives. He survived them both. The markers from left to right are for Bobby (Pauline) Rutherford, first wife, Eleanor Rutherford (second wife) and then Malcom Rutherford “in loving memory”. Which begs the question as to who put up the markers for all three, including him? My photographer couldn’t help with that one, but there are always loose ends to research.

I said on every occasion barring one. There is one exception where I didn’t get a refusal, just no response. It may be that the photographer no longer visits that site. Or being gloomy, has maybe joined the site. I probably could have just reproduced the picture and given a credit to Find a Grave, but my old-fashioned rules made me uncomfortable with that. For those who want to see the photograph check out the entry for Caroline M (Bown) Jones (1858-1933) buried in Union Dale Cemetery, Pittsburgh.

So who on earth was that?

Her gravestone says she was the wife of Albert D. Jones. Their son who only lived a week is buried there too, Albert D. Jones Jr. That is probably why the stone records the infamous Albert Delmont Jones name. Of course, our ADJ is not buried there. He dumped this wife for a society beauty, and she then dumped him when he lost his money. A third stab at matrimony had him tied with a con artiste who had a key role to play in the Fatty Arbuckle scandal. He ended his days destitute, and was buried in a potter’s field - which was subsequently covered by a freeway extension. Some mobsters who disappeared are reckoned to be buried under the freeway. In the case of Albert Delmont Jones that is literally true. Again, Find a Grave, and a detailed correspondence with a contributor, uncovered - if that is the right word - the story. It’s all been in this blog in times past.

As noted at the start, this was not intended to be a serious study in research methods. There are many who use resources and can probably find their way around them far better than I can. But sweet-talking people, being nice to them, showing an interest, and in many cases reassuring them - it’s amazing what may still be out there to find.

Find a Grave

by Jerome

This article is expanded from material that first appeared on Blog 2. Its main purpose is to show photographs of headstones for people connected with the history covered in this blog. I have received permission from all the necessary contributors on the Find a Grave site to reproduce their work here. So my grateful thanks go to Sherry, Doug, Shiver, MrsJB, JennO, Duane, blt, Neil, Chris, Mojo, Joann, Kathie and Beverley. In some cases the pictures used here are alternatives to those currently found on the site, simply because I didn’t need permission to use my own photographs.

This means that you can probably assume it is OK to copy these pictures for non-commercial use if you so choose. However, I would always recommend going back to the original source on Find a Grave as some pages contain further information on the individuals. And this is not static – new material is being added all the time to this resource. What wasn’t there for me to discover today could just be there for you to discover tomorrow.

In addition, it is worth noting that there are a number of individuals connected with Watch Tower history who do not have headstones, but nonetheless have pages devoted to them on the Find a Grave site. For example, John Corbin Sunderlin has an entry, but there is no photograph of a headstone on the page (as yet). Nonetheless, you CAN find headstones along with biographical information for both his father and his son. However, in this article, apart from a couple of paragraphs on the Staten Island Cemetery where no grave markers exist as a matter of policy (see below), these have not been covered. This article is, after all, about pictures. But I recommend that you still type in your name of choice and check.

Before we actually get to the pictures, perhaps I can illustrate the value of this resource with one current example. In researching Henry Weber for a recent article, a letter was found in ZWT from 1901 written by Edna Mary Hammond which stated that her introduction to Bible Student publications was through her brother’s Sunday school teacher. This was Henry Weber. Edna is very specific; she was 10 years old at the time. Find a Grave finds – not just Henry Weber, but also Edna Mary. We know from her entry that she was born in 1873 and also where she was born. Do the math and we know that Henry was already circulating CTR’s publications in 1883. We also know from Edna’s entry and the surrounding family entries that her sister died as a Jehovah’s Witness. So we have the right name, the right family, the right place and right religious connections. All of this to give us an earlier date than previously known for Henry Weber’s Watch Tower connections.

The Russell family

 Charles Taze Russell

 Front row - markers for CTR's father, mother, and three siblings

Back row - markers for Uncle Charles, Uncle James, and Aunt Sarah

 Father - Joseph L Russell

 The in-laws - Mahlon and Selena Ackley

 The wife - Maria F Russell

The sister-in-law and step-mother - Emma H Russell

Before the Watch Tower

Henry Grew

(No grave marker known, but this is his death certificate)

Benjamin Wilson

Jonas Wendell

 George Stetson

George Storrs

Barbour family memorial

Nelson H Barbour

Some of those who went their own way

Conley family memorial

 William H Conley

"Our Pet" - Conley's adopted daughter who died aged 10 in 1881

John H Paton

 Hugh B Rice

 Arthur P Adams

Otto von Zech

Ernest C Henninges

(wife Rose Ball is buried here too but the headstone was never updated)

Post CTR

Nathan H Knorr and Frederick W Franz

Later years

As previous articles on this blog have detailed, the Society had its own burial ground at the Rosemont United Cemeteries in Ross Township, Pittsburgh. Here CTR and a few Bethel family members and Pilgrims were buried, and their names inscribed on a pyramid monument. For biographical details of all these individuals please see articles on this blog Who Are Those Guys? Parts 1 and 2 from September 2014.

However, shortly after the headquarters moved from Pittsburgh to Brooklyn for the second time in 1919, this cemetery was to all intents and purposes abandoned. It was only several decades later that the remaining graves were sold off. See article A Short History of United Cemeteries, also from September 2014.

It made more sense to have a cemetery for Bethel family workers in New York where they were now headquartered. To replace the Pittsburgh plot, a new cemetery was created on Staten Island, New York. In 1922 the Society bought 24 acres of land in Woodrow Road, Staten Island. The area is sometimes known as Rossville and also Huguenot Park. The purpose was to build their own radio station WBBR which started broadcasting in early 1924. There was also some farming done on the land, in what was then very much a rural area.

A new graveyard was established nearby in the same street, alongside an historic landmark, the Woodrow United Methodist Church. The website NYC AM Radio History when discussing station WBBR made the statement:

Judge Rutherford died in 1942 and was buried at Rossville in a Methodist cemetery within sight of the WBBR towers.

This small burial plot was used until at least the late 1960s. There are various references to this cemetery in the Society’s literature when the death of someone well-known from their headquarters staff was announced. For example, the Awake for February 22, 1952 page 26 recounts the funeral of Clayton J Woodworth, along with two other Bethel workers in a triple interment. The article reads (in part):

On Staten Island in New York City the Watchtower Society maintains a place of burial for members of the headquarters staff known as the Bethel family. How appropriate it is that the remains of these men who labored together during their lifetime, Rutherford, Van Amburgh, Martin and Woodworth, should be buried there together!

These four had all been imprisoned together way back in 1918.

The Woodrow Road graveyard was accessible to the general public. It was obviously the policy to have no grave markers. It is reported that today you can recognise the area belonging to the Society simply because it is the only section in the cemetery without headstones.

In the 1960s the Society purchased two properties at Wallkill, Ulster County, about 100 miles north of Brooklyn, NY, totalling a reported 1200 hectares (around 3000 acres). These became known as Watchtower Farms, and extensive printing operations were transferred to this area from the early 1970s onwards. A new graveyard was created on this property that is known as the Watchtower Farms Cemetery. It is a private cemetery on private land and is therefore not accessible to the general public. The custom is now to have small grave markers put down as depicted above for Nathan Knorr and Frederick Franz.

Watchtower Farms cemetery

Very few of those buried at Wallkill have photographs on Find a Grave. However, you can still check names. Currently the site lists 164 graves.  Be warned that this list is not complete, and is not error free. For example, it lists the grave of A H MacMillan as being at Wallkill, whereas the Watchtower for 1966, page 608, clearly shows that he was buried at Staten Island. The same would be true of Giovanni DeCecca who died in 1965. These two, also imprisoned together back in 1918, were probably among the last to be interred at Woodrow Road.

In conclusion, it is acknowledged that this article does not directly add much to our knowledge of Watch Tower history as such, but is designed to highlight a resource that the author has found extremely useful in recent years. The more who use it, the more it will grow, and the more useful it can be for future researchers.

Grave number 2095

 

     In 1948 Jimmie Skinner wrote the song Doin’ my Time.

     The version I remember went:

     Doin’ my time

     With a ball and chain;

     They call you by your number

     Not your name.

     Someone to whom this ultimately applied was Albert Delmont Jones aka Albert Royal Delmont. His life story has been covered on this blog in the past (for example see -

https://truthhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=albert+delmont+jones 

– or use the search term Albert Delmont Jones). This material covers his work with Charles Taze Russell, his magazines, his marriages, his fraudulent schemes, and ultimately his death alone and in obscurity.

     But a little more original source material has to come to light. Hence, Albert’s number. When he died his grave marker had no name – just his number, 2095.

     Rewinding slightly – after all the publishing, marriages, scams and scandals, Albert disappears from the 1920 census, although if any other researcher can find him there please do so and enlighten us. Down on his luck with his heady days long behind him he turns up in the 1925 census for Buffalo, New York. A slight malfunction of a pen probably turned an entry for Albert R Delmont into Albert K Delmont, but the age is right.

     Albert is living with more than 25 other men as a roomer in three linked dwellings. The head of the family, one Geo Van Nese, calls himself a “hotel proprietor.” This appears to be a hostel for single men. Albert, who owns up to being 70 years old, is retired.

     At the end of February 1929 Albert moved into the New Castle County Hospital in Delaware. We know this from his death certificate which is now available on Find a Grave. He died there on May 15, 1930. He had been attended there by a doctor since February 28, 1929, for Chronic Diabetes. Insulin injections transformed the treatment of diabetes in the 1920s and Albert was quite fortunate to live as long as he did, especially after what we might assume as to his lifestyle.

     No family details are given on the certificate. Albert was survived by several ex-wives (by my reckoning four) and three adult children. But no-one knew where he was. And no-one cared.

     New Castle County Hospital started life as the New Castle County Almshouse in 1885.  It was designed to house people who were generally single, elderly or infirm, and crucially – poor. It was an effort of the state to care for people who had no family to help them, one suspects a bit akin to the British workhouse (Think Charles Dickens and Oliver Twist).

     A postcard exists showing the building.

   

     The caption reads: “New Castle County Hospital and Delaware State Hospital for Insane. Near Wilmington, Del.”

     The building housing Albert was the one on the left. Why anyone would choose to send such a miserable postcard to anyone else is open to question.

     If you lived there, then you could well die there, and unless relatives claimed your body you were buried in a nearby pauper’s cemetery today known as the New Castle County Hospital Cemetery (Farnhurst Potters Field).

     Here is where the numbering system came in. Each grave had a small stone marker about 5 inches square. Each stone had a number. If it had been a bad week for deaths, then once a grave was dug it could have multiple occupants.

     The hospital closed down in 1933. The building was eventually destroyed by fire, and some records thought lost. However, in recent years the Death Book for 1926–1933 was rediscovered and painstakingly recorded in a database by Dr. Katherine A. Dettwyler. The original register gives us the entry for Albert. Below, courtesy of the Delaware Public Archives is his entry. It goes right across a double page.

   

  The right hand page reads:

   

     That this is the right Albert is made clear from the census held earlier in 1930 where Albert was still sufficiently lucid to give his place of birth.

     Albert’s stone is not visible today. In the early 1960s the bulk of the cemetery was just covered over to make a ramp for an approach road to the Delaware Memorial Bridge. No records were then extant for those buried there and there was scant concern for the graveyard. Below is a modern photograph showing part of the site where a few stones can still be seen, but the numbers in the photograph show these are quite early ones. Albert is definitely buried under the bulk of the site that disappeared in the 1960s.

Photograph by Hal G. Brown, reproduced with permission.

    

     There is one quirk of fate to complete this tale. After editing his religious paper Zion’s Day Star in the 1880s, Albert tried his hand again with a political journal in 1900. It was called American Progress.

   

  I make no attempt to understand American politics of this era, and Albert no doubt was a product of his times. However, a clear tenet of his paper was that Negroes should be banned from government.

    

Careful work by Kathy Dettwyler and Hal Brown sifted through the entries in the New Castle Death Book and thousands of on-line Certificates of Death for New Castle County, and revealed that Albert was not alone in grave number 2095. You can now check out the details on Find a Grave.

     Here is Albert’s entry.

   

  But in the same grave, plot number 2095, there is also a child.

       

    

No sex was recorded, and Baby Crompton was stillborn. But the original entry for grave 2095 shows that Baby Crompton, forever sharing Albert’s final resting place under the freeway, is African-American.

     There is a certain irony there.

Judge Rutherford's Grave

    

 While this is way outside the general time frame for this blog, a couple of interesting pictures have come to hand, and this is probably the best platform on which to share them, with permission.

     CTR was buried at the Society’s own cemetery plot in United Cemeteries, Ross Township, Pittsburgh, in 1916. The 1919 convention report stated that a grave plot had also been put aside on site for J F Rutherford for when the time came.

     However, Pittsburgh soon faded into the background in major Society events. By the time JFR died in January 1942, he was spending his time between the Brooklyn N.Y. headquarters, the Staten Island radio station, WBBR, and Beth-Sarim in San Diego, California. He died at Beth-Sarim.

     He’d wanted to be buried on the Beth-Sarim property, but that was not to be. The full story can be checked in Consolation magazine for May 27, 1942.

     Ultimately he was buried in the Society’s graveyard adjacent to WBBR on Staten Island, New York. The WBBR property, which included dwellings and a small farm as well as the radio transmitter, adjoined the historic Woodrow Road Methodist Church. This had a variety of graveyards surrounding it, some pre-dating the church.

     Hayden Covington, in an interview shortly before he died, described how he, along with William and Bonnie Heath, traveled across the United States by train to bring the coffin to New York.

     The brief graveside funeral was conducted by Nathan Knorr and was reported in the press:

Source of cutting unknown

     The same news story was reproduced in a number of papers including The Carlisle Sentinel (Pennsylvania) for April 27, 1942, and The Los Angeles Times for April 26, 1942. These added an extra section before the last paragraph in the press release above.

“Today’s services were brief. The body was taken in a hearse from a funeral home to the cemetery without cortege. At the cemetery entrance a small group of followers was waiting. They carried the casket from the hearse to the grave.”

     The policy at the time was to have no grave markers at all on this site, which had been in use at least since 1932 when Robert J. Martin, a Society director and Factory Overseer, died. This remained the case for JFR. Because of this the place did not receive many visitors. However, that changed slightly in 1950.

     In 1950 the Society held the Theocracy Increase Assembly in New York over July 30 – August 6. During that time a series of photographs was issued – possibly as part of a photobook. They appear to have been produced by a private company, from this information stamped on the back of one of them.

     Over the assembly period visitors were offered tours of the Brooklyn factory and Bethel Home, as well as the WBBR radio station property with the Society’s cemetery adjacent. The photo series included various assembly scenes, and a visit to Kingdom Farm (where Gilead School was then housed). Many of the scenes look like they may have come from official sources.

     However, a visit to J F Rutherford’s grave was included and the “snapshot” nature of the picture suggests this was very unofficial.

     Since the whole point about the cemetery was that there were no markers for anyone, we have to accept that these visitors were at the right spot.

     Perhaps based on that photograph and the positioning of the tree, at least one visitor to the 1950 assembly had his own photograph taken at the same location.

     The WBBR property was sold in the late 1950s, and the cemetery was last used in the mid-1960s. To replace it, a new cemetery was created at Wallkill. What was called The Watchtower Farms Cemetery had a new policy to provide small grave markers with just the name and dates of the deceased.

     In 2015 a visitor took this picture of the Woodrow Road site.

     It is interesting to note that of the eight who went to jail together in 1918, six of them (in reality all those who remained in fellowship) continued to work together as one and were ultimately buried together at this location.

     With grateful thanks to Tom S., Chris G., Kris M. and Vincent B. for the images.

Addenda

     When this material was first published elsewhere, a question was raised about the six buried together in the Bethel plot in Woodrow Road. Robert J Martin was buried there in 1932 - see Awake February 22, 1952. Although Find a Grave states that MacMillan and DeCecca were buried at Wallkill, this is incorrect. The WT 1966 10/1 plainly shows that MacMillan was buried at Woodrow Road, and DeCecca died a few months before him. Apart from these two names, all those whose dates of death are listed for Wallkill in the Find a Grave index only date from the 1970s onward.

Find More Graves

A little over a year ago this blog carried an article on Find a Grave, highlighting the history resource that can be found in graveyards. Any new readers can easily find it by typing in Find a Grave in the search terms. They will find the original article, along with an article about Malcom Rutherford’s grave (with his two wives) and also one on the Allegheny Cemetery, where most of the Russell family were buried, and several on the Society’s plot in the United Cemeteries.

The actual article Find a Grave had photographs of graves of the extended Russell family, including CTR’s parents, siblings, wife, in-laws, etc. It covered graves from those who were influences before the founding of Zion’s Watch Tower, Benjamin Wilson, Jonas Wendell, George Stetson, and George Storrs, and then graves of those who were once in fellowship but parted company - Nelson Barbour, William Conley, John Paton, Hugh B Rice, Arthur P Adams, Otto von Zech, and Ernest Henninges. It ended with modern grave markers for Nathan Knorr and Fred Franz.

Thanks to the research work of Bernard, here are five more photographs. Four are for men who were original directors of the Society in 1884, along with Charles and Maria. 

William Imrie Mann was a director from December 15, 1884 to April 11, 1892.

Joseph Firth Smith was a director from December 15, 1884 to April 11, 1892. He is buried in the same cemetery as CTR’s parents.

Add caption

John Bartlet Adamson was a director from December 15, 1884 to January 5, 1895.

 William Cook MacMillen was a director from December 15, 1884 to May 13, 1898.

Benjamin Wallace Keith was an associate of Nelson Barbour, and one of the original contributors to Zion's Watch Tower, who ultimately sided with John Paton. His history is discussed in Separate Identity volume 1.