More from "Out of Babylon" - Unedited and raw

Dissension was not uncommon. It arose on several grounds. Those with similar, but ultimately opposition views attended Watch Tower meetings. Some swayed by Barbour continued to attend Watch Tower meetings because there was nowhere else to go. Paton’s adherents were increasingly small in number, often having no meetings of their own. They attended Watch Tower meetings, using them to spread Paton’s universalist ideas. We discuss it more fully elsewhere, but we note here that beginning at least in 1882, Paton prepared booklets and tracts that went out primarily to Watch Tower readers. The earliest of these known to us was a thirty-two page booklet reprinting chapter four and part of chapter five of the ‘revised’ edition of Day Dawn.[1] As long as the meetings included those with opposition beliefs, opposition literature made its way into the fellowship and colored group discussions.

            Most examples come from a somewhat later period but seem to accurately represent the problem. In Brockport, New York, someone donated a subscription to Paton’s World’s Hope and Russell’s Watch Tower to the Free Library.[2] A letter written to J. H. Paton in 1902, illustrates the situation: “Sister V. … asked me to subscribe for the Hope; and I … have never been sorry. … It has been a blessing to me and much company when alone. Z. W. T.; the Hope, and my Bible are about all I read.”[3]

            Benjamin Ford Weatherwax, a retired Methodist clergyman living in Courtland, New York took up the Watch Tower message in 1901, possibly from earlier preaching by S. O. Blunden, who preached there in 1893.[4] Weatherwax wrote to Russell expressing his faith. A follow up letter was printed in the January 1, 1902, Watch Tower. It told the story of his withdrawal from the Methodist Church:

I have had a big fight and gained a glorious victory. I send you my article prepared for the Conference. I had a hard time to get a hearing, as my name was called before I reached the seat of Conference. Had I been there then I could have had the floor; but after that it was difficult. After pressing the matter they allowed me five minutes to speak and I read rapidly until I reached the sentence, “Thy Kingdom come,” two thirds through, and there the Bishop called me to order. He said I had used up six minutes and I asked for an extension of time but could not get it. (They had enough.) So I asked our own City Editor if he would like to publish it and he consented.

There was a great surprise I assure you, at Syracuse Conference, when I withdrew from it and gave my reasons even partially. I commenced giving out tracts-- until all were gone. When I gave one I said, “Read that carefully, when you are all alone.” I have a good many old friends in the Conference and Church (Nominal), but thanks be to God, I am the Lord's free man. Some have asked me what church I am going to unite with, and my answer is the “Church of the first born, whose names are written in heaven.”[5]

            Benjamin Ford Weatherwax (June 15, 1836 – November 8, 1903) attended Fairfield Seminary, and later Hartwick Academy. Though he farmed for a while, he “he felt a strong call to preach the gospel.” He was admitted to the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church becoming an itinerant preacher in New York. He retired in 1885, and returned to farming. He gave up farming in 1892, moving to Courtland, New York.[6] He was convinced by Watch Tower doctrine about 1900 and preached it. He convinced six others, and they formed the Church of the Little Flock in Courtland. By 1903, The Syracuse, New York, Post-Standard gave it a membership of “about ten.”[7] Shortly after he resigned from the Methodist ministry, the editor of The Courtland, New York, Evening Standard published his statement of faith:

                        Courtland, N. Y., October 29, [1901]

To the Editor of The Standard:

Sir – I have been asked to give a reason for the hope that is within the church of the “Little Flock.” First, our organization is of a heavenly origin rather than earthly. We belong to the “Church of the first born whose names are written in heaven.” Our people are scattered all over the earth. They are known by their Lord. …They are held together by love divine … . They are one body and one spirit … .

We hold that the church which God is electing or selecting during this gospel age is promised a spiritual or heavenly reward to be “made partakers of the divine nature,” and to share with Christ the work of blessing the world during the millennium. We understand that the millennial age is for the very purpose of causing “the knowledge of the Lord to fill the whole earth as the waters cover the sea,” and see “the true light which lighteth [sic] every man that cometh into the world,” giving all a full opportunity to come in to [sic] harmony with God.

We understand that the Bible teaches both the doctrine of election and the doctrine of free grace – the election of this church during this age and free grace for the world in general in the millennial age and in perfect harmony as shown by the Scriptures. We also under that 6,000 years of earth’s history is past according to Bible chronology and that the seventh thousand is the mellinnium [sic] of Christ’s reign – and that the present time from 1874 to 1914 is the lapping period styled in Scripture the “harvest” of the age, in which the number of the elect church will be completed, and that then the millennial age will be ushered in by a great time of trouble, anarchy, etc., mentioned repeatedly in Scripture which will level society, humble pride and prepare the way for Immanuel’s long promised Kingdome “under the whole heavens.”[8]

           

            All of this is standard Watch Tower doctrine of the era. As with other former clergy, Weatherwax assumed the leading position in the group. Meeting-time advertisements note him as “Elder,” a common Methodist designation. As did a few other former clergy, he continued to see himself as having special status. Based on his short article for the Cortland paper, editors of nearby journals presented him as the “founder of a new sect.” The Newburgh, New York, Register told its readers that “the Rev. B. F. Weatherwax, formerly of this city, has withdrawn from the Methodist Episcopal conference and has founded a new religious denomination.”[9] By the end of April 1902, they were meeting in the W.C.T.U. Hall. Sunday services were at 10 am, and a meeting for prayer and Bible study was on Wednesday at 7:30 pm.[10]

            Before 1890 either Russell or one of the others most prominent in the Watch Tower ministry would visit newly formed groups. George B. Raymond, a Watch Tower evangelist, visited the Cortland group twice. An announcement in the April 12, 1902, Cortland Standard said he’d address a meeting of the church in Good Templars’ Hall. No subject was given. R. E. Streeter visited The Church of the Little Flock in Cortland in July 1902 for two days. No subject was announced. He was back in December 1902, Speaking Wednesday, December 3^rd on the topic “The Coming Kingdom,” and the next evening on “Restitution of All Things.”[11] Raymond returned in early May 1903, addressing the group twice. The Standard printed the congregation’s statement of belief:

There are people who believe the world is just entering the milennial [sic] reign of Christ, and that a wonderful age of progress, both material and spiritual, is about to be ushered in, preceded, however, by ten or fifteen years of intense strife and anarchy. They believe that the earth and the great bulk of humanity, both present and past, will, during the next thousand years, be restored to the perfection which 6,000 years ago was exampled in the Garden of Eden.

They reject the idea of eternal torment, claiming it to be unscriptural; asserting that only those who are guilty of sinning willfully against the fullest light (information) are to be considered incorrigible; these and these only, are to be destroyed in the second death.

They believe that God has for 6,000 years been allowing man to gain a sad experience with sin, and that he will, during the next thousand years, the millennium, restrain sin, that man may see righteousness n all of its beauty, and witness the blessed results of its reign. Having had 6,000 years’ experience with sin and 1,000 years’ experience with righteousness, man will be well prepared to make a wise choice as to which he will serve, and will then be tested by loosing of Satan to deceive those who during this long period shall have failed to become well grounded in godliness, Those being thus deceived will go down into the second death from which there will be no resurrection.[12]

           

Despite this concise statement of Watch Tower belief, Weatherwax deviated from it that year. He encountered Barbourite doctrine and adopted Barbour’s new chronology. Barbour expected the final last-days acts to occur in 1907. Weatherwax preached that. His obituaries report that the church “members believe the world ends in 1907.” We lack details. We don’t know how he encountered Barbourite doctrine. We do not know why he found it persuasive.[13] Contrary to newspaper claims, most members of the Cortland church retained Watch Tower belief. We think that the congregation retained Weatherwax because though he deviated in doctrine, they had tremendous respect for him. Writing some months after he died, Isaac Edgecomb described him as “a man of great faith.” Edgecomb was a Methodist, and wrote this despite Weatherwax’s defection from that church.[14]

The small congregation continued, placing regular ads in the Cortland paper through 1904. They numbered thirteen in 1906, all of whom traveled to Binghampton, New York, on January 26^th to hear Russell speak.[15] Cortland received two visits by traveling Watch Tower Pilgrims in 1908, and persisted at least to 1917. We do not know if the current Witness congregation is an outgrowth of the original group.

      Syracuse, New York, Herald

 

Randolph Elwood Streeter

George B. Raymond

---

[1]               Announcements: The World’s Hope¸ July 1884, page 152. The title appears to be Good News for All.

[2]               Annual Report of the Brockport Free Library, The Brockport, New York, Republic, December 1, 1887.

[3]               R.O.L to Paton, The World’s Hope, February 15, 1902, page 47.

[4]               Blunden to Russell as found in the May 1, 1892, Watch Tower, pages 133-134. [Not in Reprints.]

[5]               Interesting Letters from Friends, Zion’s Watch Tower, January 1, 1902, page 15.

[6]               C. E. Fitch: Encyclopedia of Biography of New York: A life Record of Men and Women Whose Sterling Character and Energy and Industry Have Made Them Preëminent in Their Own and Many Other States, Volume 3.

[7]               Drops Dean in Hen Yard, The Syracuse, New York, Post-Standard, November 3, 1903. Founds a New Sect, Ogdensburg, New York, News¸ November 12, 1901.

[8]               B. F. Weatherwax: A Question of Belief, The Courtland, New York, Evening Standard, November 2, 1901. We do not know if the grammar errors are his or the editor’s. 

[9]               Founds a New Sect, The Newburgh, New York, Register, November 7, 1901.

[10]             Church of the Little Flock, Cortland, New York, Evening Standard, April 25, 1902.

[11]             Church of the Little Flock, Cortland, New York, Evening Standard, July 28, 1902.

[12]             Two Meetings, Cortland, New York, Evening Standard, May 9, 1903.

[13]             Drops Dead in Hen Yard, The Syracuse, New York, Post-Standard¸ November 3, 1903; The Syracuse, New York, Journal, November 9, 1903. There are possible explanations as to how Weatherwax encountered Barbourite doctrine. W. Horace Kirk, owner of a blacksmithing business and evangelist preacher, was interested in the Church of the Little Flock. He attended a “convention of the Church of the Little Flock in Binghampton, New York, in May 1904. His business partner was a Hoyt, some of whom were Adventist and Age-to-Come believers. There was through Kirk a connection to Rochester and the Fullers. Fullers were Barbourites. None of this raises to the level of sound proof.

[14]             I. Edgecomb: Some Pillars, The Cortland, New  York Evening Standard, October 14, 1904.

[15]             To Attend Lecture, The Syracuse, New York, Herald¸ January 27, 1906.

Church of the Little Flock, Courtland, New York.

Benjamin Ford Weatherwax, a retired Methodist Episcopal clergyman, wrote to Russell sometime before 1901 and was eventually convinced the Watch Tower taught truth. He resigned from the ME church and started a small fellowship with six others. We can trace this group to early 1904 but not beyond.

Can one of you find more? Especially after mid 1903 with Weatherwax.'s death?

We also need the full name of "Brother" G. B. Raymond of Binghampton, New York. He lived there in 1904. In 1907 he was in Muncie, Indiana. By 1911 he was back in New York.

Update: We no longer need Raymond's full name. It is George B. Raymond. His photo is in a convention report. 

???

I have a huge amount of scanned documents, pdf files and other files that need to be organized. These are all historical items related to Watch Tower history. I haven’t a clue how to do this. Any suggestions?

In 1880s

In the early 1880s a "brother McGranor (also spelled McGrannor) was an active Watch Tower evangelist. He was from Pennsylvania. We can't idenitfy him. Can you?

We're Starting ...

We're starting a new chapter. It considers the development of personal evangelism among Watch Tower readers. If you have documentation or observations to share on that topic, now is the time to do it.

We continue to work on the chapter that details clergy involvement in the Watch Tower ministry. If you have information we might lack, pass it on.

Another brought back from obscurity

Josephus Perry Martin

            J. P. Martin was born near New Lebanon, Ohio, September 29, 1853. When he was a child, his parents moved from place to place trying to make a success of farming. After four weeks of illness, his father died of Typhoid Fever in 1866. His mother returned the family to Ohio. Eventually Martin married, and he and his wife Mollie married and joined the German Baptist Brethren church, sometimes called the Dunkards. When they joined in 1878, the church was on the verge of crisis, but Martin and his wife moved to Ashland, Ohio, and he enrolled in the Brethren college there. His attendance was limited to “two terms.” We believe that by “two terms” he meant two semesters because by 1880 he was home and “farming as usual.”           

Joseph Perry Martin

            The German Brethren were in the midst of a fierce theological battle and splitting into factions. Martin and his wife were drawn into the Progressive, or more liberal branch, and he was elected pastor. He says in his hand-written autobiography: “In 1882 I was elected to the ministry … and began to mix preaching with farming. … In the autumn of 1883 we migrated with our little family from the home of my wife's parents to Hocking County, Ohio, near Logan. Here I served five congregations during the next few months, in the Progressive branch of the Dunkard Church, two in Hocking, one in Fairfield and two in Perry counties. It was an inclement winter, excessive cold and snow in its forepart and excessive rainfall and high waters later in the season and the exposure of it was considerable and my work strenuous.”

            The strain resulted in a collapse. He describes it as a nervous break down, but the symptoms as described in his autobiography suggest physical rather than mental issues. He reduced his religious activity but continued to preach as he could. It was during his illness in 1883 that his beliefs began to shift. His hand-written memoir records his introduction to The Watch Tower:

In this state, broken in body and mind and doubtful of my religious standing, while living at Bremen, a copy of The Watch Tower, an independent, fearless and uncompromising bible exponent, providentially fell into my hands. It was in the home of Augustine Palmer, in Hocking county near Logan, a deacon in the Progressive church, where this unexpected blessing overtook me. This copy was sent to him as a sample, and, as he did not appreciate it, he consented for me to take it home with me. That was the beginning and the end is not yet; for forty-six years I have been a close and constant reader of The Watch Tower.

A Vista of Hope Opens To My Troubled Heart and Mind:

I did not know fully what I was carrying home with me, but what I had already read therein led me to hope that it would be helpful. In fact I later found therein where I could procure a panacea for all my physical, mental and moral distempers, and especially a remedy for my spiritual disquietude and uncertainty.

Gradually I learned through its columns that the long cherished theories of orthodoxy and churchianity -- “Trinity”, “Immortality of The Soul” and “Eternal Torment” tenets -- were not supported by the teaching of the Bible, and were in fact denounced thereby.

A Galaxy of Bible Tenets:

Gradually the following fundamental tenets of the Bible envisioned themselves: “Creation”, “Justice Manifested”, “The Abrahamic Promise”, “The Birth of Jesus”, “The Ransom”, “The Resurrection”, “The Hidden Mystery”, “Our Lord's Return”, “Glorification” and “Restoration”. These enterweave themselves into a loving, wise, just and powerful scheme of human deliverance and reconciliation at the hands of Jehovah God through his Son, our Lord, Christ Jesus, and our Saviour.

An Earnest Contention For More Light - And A Field of Action:

It was while this joyfully and gradually learning these glorious Bible truths, and while as gladly though timidly imparting them to others, both by preaching and by giving out literature, that I was invited by my Dunkard brethren to resign my ministry in the Dunkard Church, because of, what they dubbed it, my heresy.

This I unhesitatingly did, yet with considerable fearfulness and apprehension. I also withdrew from membership with that and all denominations, denouncing them and their creeds as man made and without the authority of God's Word, The Bible. And with all its heart-pains and severances I have never in all these years regretted the step which I then took. Our parting was fraught with many heart-aches and much sorrow on both sides, and but little or no manifestation of bitterness and anger. For this I am thankful, and remember kindly those from whom I parted at that time. This was in June 1887.[1]

Front Page – Martin’s Autobiography

            By his resignation from the progressive Brethren in 1887, Martin had been writing to Russell for some time. Several of his letters were printed in the Watch Tower and bring us deeper into his history.

            The first of his published letters appears in the April 1887 issue of the Watch Tower. He expressed his appreciation for The Plan of the Ages. He was especially impressed with chapter fifteen, The Day of Jehovah:

I am much I am much impressed by what I have just read. Although I have read this chapter previously, yet it came to me under many new and impressive features; hence I conclude that I am but a child in the primary department of the school of Christ; that I have but tasted of the spring-branch, and that the fountain is farther up the mountain side, of which if I desire to drink I must continue to climb.

            He continued to preach, moving briefly to the Reformed church. We do not know with certainty which Reformed church he meant, though we suspect he meant the Reformed Episcopalians. They didn’t tolerate his preaching any more than had the Dunkards:

Well, I am become unpopular to the Reformed sect; they became fearful; so I don't preach for them any more. My own sect begin to mistrust me, but I am not sure what they will do, as I am about the only minister they know of who will preach for them caring nothing as to whether they pay him or not. All that is wrong with me is that I care as little whether my preaching pleases them, as I do whether they give me anything for it. I am not popular and what is worse (to them) I am not trying to be. I do what I can to spread the truth while earning my living by farming.[2]

            We must date his resignation to shortly after this letter was written. And his letter shows us a man determined to preach truth as he saw it despite social consequences. His next letter dated April 25, 1887, was written the day he resigned from the progressive Brethren Church:

To-day I am as free from the trammels of sectarianism as the winds that play about me. I have bid a long, long adieu to the nominal church; I have stepped out of “Babylon;” I am feeding in the valleys of God and on the hill-lands of truth. Oh! how sweet those rich pastures! The flesh-pots of Egypt are not to be compared to the rich viands of promise. Their savor has become a nauseating stench in my nostrils. Let those who cling to the sluggish streams of tradition drink of their foul waters and feed on the garbage they accumulate; but for me, the cool, refreshing waters of truth only can make glad the waste places of my existence. I have separated myself from the church with which I stood identified, and now consider that I am a member of the "body." Perhaps I am not as strong as some, but by the grace of God I am what I am.

I am still preaching in New Lebanon every Sunday night. My preaching is troubling a good many people. They fear it will undermine sectarianism, and their fear is well founded. The truth is slowly spreading, and not infrequently in directions unlooked for. I set no stakes as to what I will do, but go on unpretentiously in the discharge of my duty, little concerning myself as to where it may place me.[3]

            The next printed letter is dated June 18, 1887. He reported what he saw as spiritual advancement, and we find him circulating sample issues of Zion’s Watch Tower:

My z.w. towers samples are about exhausted. I sent many of them by mail, and I am constantly receiving letters from those of the faith and oh! how wonderful! they all speak the same things, having the same mind and judgment. How easy to be of one mind when once we reach the fat place in God's unlimited pasture lands. It matters little how lean the sheep may be on leaving their sectarian enclosures, soon after reaching the rich succulent pastures of Christ's fold they begin to improve. Some of us are having a weekly Bible meeting in which we search the Scriptures to see if these things be true. The Lord is with us and we are getting stronger and stronger.

            He ended the letter with expressions of thanks for freedom from error and the path into enlightenment:  “I cannot refrain from saying that I am so glad I am free; free from those awful shackles of a benighted and misguided mind and conscience. I shall always thank God for your instrumentality in lifting this burden from my tired shoulders, and pointing me to the glorious light.”[4] The last published letter shows him as newly entering the colporteur work, circulating the first volume of Millennial Dawn: “I am pleased to do what I can, be it much or little, feeling that every book I sell is a footprint in the sands of time to guide some discouraged, disheartened fellow-mortal to the fount of truth at no far distant day. I wish I could flood the world with it. I am surprised at myself in this work; it seems that I am particularly adapted to it.” He was off to preach in Miamisburg and a “brother Van Hook” was going to take his “pulpit” while he was gone. Van Hook has eluded identification.

            Martin remained a Watch Tower adherent until his death on June 6, 1932. His autobiography, written in 1930, ends with these words:

This I unhesitatingly did, yet with considerable fearfulness and apprehension. I also withdrew from membership with that and all denominations, denouncing them and their creeds as man made and without the authority of God's Word, The Bible. And with all its heart-pains and severances I have never in all these years regretted the step which I then took. Our parting was fraught with many heart-aches and much sorrow on both sides, and but little or no manifestation of bitterness and anger. For this I am thankful, and remember kindly those from whom I parted at that time. This was in June 1887.

From 1887 to 1898 was an exceedingly trying period to me. To be suddenly severed from all church activities and associations, and to as suddenly step out into unfriendly and strange environments alone, without sympathy, without aid from human sources, as an abandoned heretic, requires more than human aid to sustain one's moral courage to proceed. I repeat, those were indeed trying years, and only the grace of God, the visits of The Watch Tower and the many letters from Charles T. Russell, editor of The Watch Tower, enabled me to humbly traverse them.

And to live to see the time when you can meet and fellowship with thousands of like precious faith in fields where you once stood alone, and to know that your own feeble efforts were a little helpful in causing this change, is worth all the trials of a life time. As my mind reverts and flits hither and thither over the bottom lands and hillwards of the group of states bordering on the Ohio River, I think of many in many places whose hearts have been watered with truth by my feeble efforts. Between us is a mutual friendship of which the world knows naught, and is reward enough for our services if no other awaits us.

This is a patch work quilt -- I like to look at, I like to think of each and every patch in it, and how they were patiently shaped and joined together in a design of brotherhood under the Fatherhood of God. But, much as I like this vision, I must turn from it, and to present and future services, for, apparently, my life work is not yet done, God who guides me, only, knows. Amen.

---

[1]              J. P. Martin: An Autobiography. Hand-written manuscript dated 1930.

[2]              Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, April 1887, page 2. [Not in Reprints.]

[3]              Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1887, page 2. [Not in Reprints.]

[4]              Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, August 1887, pages 1-2. [Not in Reprints.]

Herbert Mitchell

We need biographical details, even minor ones, for Herbert Mitchell, resident of Newburgh, New York, in 1887. He may have been born about 1860, but we don't know. His wife seems to have been a seamstress. Any detail will help.

Mitchell was part of the small group (about 20) that met in Newburgh in the late 1880s. Help if you can!

Frank Draper

We need a photograph of Frank Draper. Anyone?

We now have several photos. Thanks everyone!

Russia

We are logging a number of visits from Russia. Many of these seem to be spam or fake visits. I do not want to block an entire country, though I might if the problem persists. If you are from Russia and visit this blog regularly, post a comment or hello so I know you're really human.

Developing chapter - temp post

Temporary. Unedited. HERE FOR COMMENTS. Please make one.

Clergymen and Lay Preachers

            From the earliest days some clergy were attracted to the Watch Tower message. As we observed in volume one, abandoning previous affiliation was difficult because it meant giving up regular income. So we meet two classes of clergy: Those who suffered the consequences of their faith, and those who flirted with the message, believing all or part of it, but who did not become adherents. We should profile some of these.

            Some early converts owed their conversion to contact with clergy, lay preachers and Bible class leaders who adopted some or all of the Watch Tower’s message. This is largely an untold tale. When in 1920 the Watch Tower Society reprinted its first forty years they omitted “some of the less interesting letters.” Nearly all letters from clergy were omitted. In response to clergy opposition, slanderous sermons and defamatory tracts, antipathy toward clergy increased dramatically after 1910. The arrest and later conviction of Watch Tower principals is directly traceable to clergy influence as is the ban on Watch Tower work and publications in Canada during World War I. It is in this context that letters from clergy were omitted from the reprint volumes. It was a largely successful attempt to alter history. Since the easiest access to this period is through the reprints, none of this story has been told.

           Many of the clergy who accepted the Watch Tower message are unnamed in the magazine and, despite our best efforts, remain anonymous. In the June 1882 Watch Tower¸ Russell reported that a lay preacher in Texas and a Methodist Episcopal clergyman were both interested. They read Food for Thinking Christians and were convinced by it:

One brother in Texas, a Steward and Class-Leader in the M.E. Church, says he received and read “Food” very carefully. He felt convinced as to his duty, and had already resigned his connection with the church and become a free man in Christ, stepping out from the barriers of creeds to study the Word of God unbiased by human traditions.

Post has been deleted.

More from the untitled chapter on clergy interest

Raw, unedited material. Comments wanted.

S. I. Hickey

            Samuel Ingraham Hickey, a Presbyterian clergyman in disfavor with a mission to the poor because of aggressive missionary tactics, obtained a copy of The Plan of the Ages shortly after publication. He wrote a lengthy letter to Russell expressing his frustration as his denomination and his belief that Millennial Dawn had led him to Truth. He attended Bloomsburg Normal School (now Bloomsburg University), to train as a teacher. And he attended Washington and Jefferson College. Later, Hickey graduated from Princeton Seminary and was ordained July 15, 1884. A year later he transferred from Pennsylvania to Brooklyn, New York, where he became the Associate Pastor of Throop Avenue Church. His primary assignment was to mission and temperance work. Beyond his first letter to Russell, there is almost no surviving record of his work in Brooklyn. We can place him at Clifton Place Chapel in Brooklyn on July 3, 1886, assisting at a day-long temperance rally. And in September 1886 he preached at a rally of the West Newburgh, New York, Total Abstinence Society. [1]

            Hickey’s aggressive street ministry led him to Watch Tower doctrine. He purchased a brush from a paint store, using it to apply paste to broadsides warning of eternal torture. An adherent working in the store discussed restitution doctrine with him, “but he, being a regular ordained minister of the Presbyterian Denomination, could not see it.” The store clerk recalled that Hickey thought him to be “a little off.” Hickey returned some days later to find the clerk reading Food for Thinking Christians to a group of men:

Another day, I was reading out of food in the store to a crowd of men, and Bro. Hickey was present. He came over to me and said, “What have you got there?” I told him it was a little book called “food for thinking christians.” He asked me where I got it, and I told him. He said he would write to you, and he did. You sent him millennial dawn, and you know how he was closeted for three days with dawn and the Bible, and when he came around to the store again, he was very happy, and praising the Lord.[2]

            Hickey wrote to Russell in August 1886. His letter is preserved entire in Zion’s Watch Tower:

New York, August 23, 1886. To the Author of Millennial Dawn:

dear brother: Truly the entrance of his Word giveth light! Your book, Millennial Dawn, has been used by God to so illuminate his divine revelation that the glorious view seems to have left me like one in a trance. Trained, as I have been, in the most rigidly Calvinistic school of thought, my whole self naturally and quickly assumed the defensive as I caught the spirit of the book in its opening pages. But God had beyond all doubt, been preparing my mind and heart for the childlike reception of his truth. And laying aside all prejudice, preconceived notions, and “traditions of the elders,” I closeted myself for the greater part of three days with my Bible and Dawn, and earnestly seeking, in prayer, the guidance of God's Holy Spirit to lead me into all truth, I feasted upon the fat things and drank in the precious truth until I could almost say with Paul, “Whether in the body I cannot tell; or whether out of the body I cannot tell: God knoweth.”

I have long since become dissatisfied and disheartened concerning the clash and din of jarring discord among opposing creeds and rival sects composing the heterogeneous “mass of baptized profession” – each division, large or small, wresting the Scriptures to conform to its own particular phase of belief, causing the Word to appear so distorted that its divine Author would fail to recognize his own production. But, blessed be God, the Scriptures, in reality, cannot be broken, and however men may seem to pervert them to support their peculiar views, they remain unchanged and unchangeable – the Rock of Eternal truth! I praise God that he has made you instrumental in opening my eyes to behold the beautiful symmetry which the Word exhibits in the marvelous combination of its manifold and multiform parts, and in unstopping my ears to hear the delightful harmony which its many and varied notes produce when taken in their entirety.

S. I. HICKEY, Presbyterian Minister.[3]

In a follow-up letter, Hickey told Russell of his frustrations with mission work:

           

Having failed during the fall and winter to bring the “neglected classes” within the Mission building to hear the gospel, I began in May a more aggressive method … . And for thus breaking away from the customary methods which had proved futile, and going out “into the streets and lanes of the cities,” I immediately lost caste with the Church and my ministerial brethren. The controllers of the Mission requested my withdrawal, and the committee from a large Presbyterian church in this city, who had engaged me to preach for them during this summer, waited upon me and requested me to release them from the agreement. They wanted not a man in their pulpit who had so little regard for his clerical dignity. Since which time I have been proclaiming what I believed to be the truth by distribution of tracts and other religious literature, and by posting up bold-type Scripture texts on fences, telegraph poles, etc. through the city. …

Now that I have received the truth as God has permitted you to present it to me, I long to proclaim it, and to give my whole time and attention to the work of spreading it abroad. Can you suggest ways and means? I am prepared to, and expect at the next opportunity to withdraw from all “ecclesiastical” connections.[4]

Presbyterian upset was precipitated by his outdoor ministry. The last Sunday in May 1886, with permission of the owner, he preached to a crowd at Ridgeway park, a baseball field and amusement area. Some “vicious boys” threw stones and there was “some disorder” when he began speaking, A Queens County deputy sheriff tried to stop him and “roughly handled” him. The crowd turned sympathetic, and the land owner restrained the deputies, pointing out that he had permission to be there, and they did not.[5] This was duly reported in the press. Scandal followed, and Hickey took up an independent street ministry but remained an ordained Presbyterian minister. He might have expected a difficult crowd and police intervention. The Queens County Sheriff strictly enforcing Sunday laws, canceling baseball games and boxing matches. The crowds were notoriously violent. But it was these people Hickey wanted to reach.

After reading The Plan of the Ages, he withdrew from the Presbyterian ministry October 4, 1886. His resignation was duly reported in the conference report of October twenty-six.  He left the Presbyterian ministry amidst endless gossip. “Numerous predictions were made concerning me by friends, relatives, and former clerical associates,” he wrote. “One was to the effect that I would soon go into infidelity; another, that I would lose my reason; another, that I would return to the fold of Orthodoxy and Calvinism.”[6]

Some weeks earlier the Hickeys changed residence, moving from 974 Myrtle to 174 Hart Street, from one Brooklyn brownstone to another. We do not know if the move is related to his disaffection with the Presbyterians, but suspect it may reflect a decrease in income associated with his loss of preaching and mission assignments.[7] He immediately took up the Watch Tower ministry. When asked back by the Newburgh, New York, temperance society in late October 1886, he spoke on themes we can identify with Watch Tower theology: “Proof of Two Salvations” and “The Judgment Day.”

The Newburgh, New York, Daily Register

October 30, 1886.

Hickey was introduced to the Brooklyn congregation and entered the colporteur work. (Russell called it “canvassing.”) By February 1887, Russell listed him among those most prominent in the work.[8] Simon Blunden assisted him in the work, and though we only have one record for that, Blunden’s assistance was probably greater than noted in the single letter that mentions it. Blunden’s letter to Russell was published in the March 1887, Watch Tower. “I aided Brother Hickey four Sundays in succession,” Blunden wrote.[9]

And he started a series of meetings that were “favorably started.” Illness intervened. By mid-year 1887, his activity was restricted by a debilitating and painful illness. His physician advised him to travel to Saratoga Springs, “and drink certain of the waters there for the removal of the gravel by dissolving.” The gravel, complained of by Dumas’ Aramis in fiction, are kidney stones, painful in real life in ways a fictional character never experienced. Hickey considered selling The Plan of the Ages to pay expenses. His wife tried to dissuade him.[10] While still ill, Hickey and his wife traveled to Newburgh, New York, a small village about sixty miles north of New York City, to keep the annual communion observance. About twenty took communion. We draw from his report that he used his previous contacts within the Temperance movement to spread the Watch Tower message.[11] As we observed, he preached the Watch Tower message there as early as October 1886, and his work bore fruitage.

He spent about four months at Saratoga drinking the mineral water and waiting on a cure. As did many fervent Christians in that era, he believed each life event was directed by God. He sought meaning in his illness, concluding:

 … that the prime object my Heavenly Father had in view in the severity of his dealings with me during the three months (just past) of physical suffering, was to bring me to see what is now manifestly my plain duty. That is, to devote all the strength God gives me to the work of carrying to others and to as many as possible, that same blessed instrumentality which served to dispel the darkness from my own pathway, and to carry me forward and upward to such sublime heights of vantage ground, as to make me spurn forever anything and everything that is of the earth earthy; and to so fill and sway and agitate my throbbing heart as to all but burst, it in the sudden and mighty inflow of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord; and to plunge me into such fathomless depths of the boundless ocean of God's love as to cause me to struggle and gasp, and – in my supreme joy, to wonder what possibilities there must be – can be, when we see face to face. God, I say, has been teaching me by exceedingly severe dealings that my bounden duty is “go and do likewise!” I can see very plainly now as I look back at the various stages of my sickness, how that God, in love permitted a severe and sudden attack when I thought I was gaining and began to plan for “my way.” That happened so often, that at last my dull comprehension has been sharpened and I have answered my Master with a “Yea, Lord, thy servant heareth!”[12]

We could have summarized his belief in a sentence or too, but it affords us insight into his character and personality. This was not hyperbole. He meant what he said, and, though others took the same tack, this statement is fraught with such emotion that one wonders about his mental stability. He was at least an emotional Christian rather than a rational one. We find him in extremes elsewhere in his life as we show below. However, true to his word, he sold Millennial Dawn while recuperating in Saratoga, even though he believed he was dying. He believed Saratoga was an unfavorable spot: “there could probably be no less favorable spot chosen than this wicked, brilliant, flashing Summer resort.” But he still sold ten to fifteen copies a day.[13]

The Brooklyn, New York, directories from 1888 and 1889 list him as a canvasser. We do not know if that’s a reference to his colportage or to commercial sales. Hickey disrupted a Presbyterian conference in May 1889. He seems never to have resolved issues connected to his difficulty within the Presbyterian Church. He had a circular printed in some quantity and interrupted the meeting of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church being held in New York City. Newspaper reports described him as “a crank.” He “appeared near the moderator’s desk and shouted to the brethren to ‘awake and bestir themselves.’”[14] The Pittsburgh Dispatch reported: “Soon after the afternoon session began a small man with a peaked brown beard and a pale complexion stepped from somewhere to the head of the center aisle next to the platform. He had under one arm an Oxford Bible, and in the hand a package of circulars.” He tossed circulars to the crowd, shouting, according to the Dispatch, “Men, brethren, fathers, it’s time to awake out of sleep. You are stupefied -” Reaction was immediate:

“You have no right here,” began the Rev. Dr. Howard Crosby. Other cries resounded through the church and half the brethren were on their feet. Two or three gray-haired and spectacles doctors of divinity jumped out into the aisle, got behind the intruder and pushed him, unresisting, down the aisle toward the door. On the way out he showered the commissioners with black-bordered circulars. “I am an ex-Presbyterian clergyman, he said, “and your servant in Christ, S. I. Hickey. I’m sorry the brethren didn’t approve of me. For further information address me at Station B, Brooklyn. … I am only doing what I believe is my duty.”[15]

We couldn’t locate a copy of Hickey’s circular and believe that sort excerpts from it in The Dispatch article are all that survive. The newspaper described the circular as “a little misty.” It appeared to be, wrote the reporter, “an argument in support of the doctrine of probation after death.” The followed the only surviving paragraphs:

We Presbyterians have an army of clergy distinguished by flattering titles, seeking worldly advancement, who covetously receive honor one of another, many receiving princely salaries beside perquisites for their hire.

Wherein the Inconsistency Lies.

We have as officers in our church the President of the United States, Cabinet officers, Supreme Court, Governors, editors and owners of metropolitan journals, merchant princes, manufacturing monarchs, railroad magnates, stock manipulators, monopolizers of the earth and its bounties, and other great ones. Mark our flagrant duplicity, therefore, in claiming to be followers of Jesus Christ, whom the world’s rich and great hated and despised, who said to His disciples: ‘The world hath hated them because they are not of this world.’

After being tossed out of the church, he and an unnamed companion continued to distribute circulars. Dr. Crosby called the police who ejected them. This was and remains an illegal violation of free speech rights, but the police in this era felt empowered to made decrees with no basis in law. We do not know what Russell felt about Hickey’s invasion of the Presbyterian Assembly. He never says. But he welcomed Hickey to the Memorial convention at Allegheny the next month and spoke favorably of him in a subsequent convention report.[16]

He could not support himself through colportage, becoming instead a “traveling representative of New York interests.” He preached and met with Watch Tower adherent groups as he traveled. In 1891 he became editor of the Commercial Enquirer, of New York, and assistant editor of the Dry Goods Chronicle. He is listed as an editor in the 1901 Newark, New Jersey directory. But he continued to travel commercially, selling “novelties,” small, cheap gifts and toys.[17] The public record conflicts with a family history published in 1904, and we do not know which is correct. The genealogy says of Hickey:

Early in 1898, being relieved of all commercialism, he was at last fully convinced, God’s Spirit witnessing with his spirit, that Christ meant literally that his disciples were to “labor not for the food which perisheth,” to “seek not,” any temporal thing, but that “all things should be superadded” to one “seeking the Kingdom of God.” Hence, his only and all-absorbing occupation is just the striving to enter the Kingdom with Christ. 

In February 1899, he addressed a rambling letter to Russell that without giving specifics testifies to a crisis of faith. Published in the March 1^st issue of The Watch Tower, it speaks about his view of Christ as exemplar. He said he had been emphasizing it until it obscured his view of Christ as Ransomer. These are all phrases used in the continuing Ransom-Atonement controversy. But the letter isn’t clear enough to say with assurance what he meant. He reread Tabernacle Shadows and was impressed with it, and incidentally tells us that he was living in near poverty.

“I have not sinned willfully, in the sense of Heb. 10:26,” he wrote. But he felt he had sinned and was ready to return to Christ. He reread the four volumes of  Millennial Dawn, convinced anew they were “truth.” He told Russell of his conviction:

After this study came a careful perusal of the four volumes of millennial dawn, drawn in their order from the library. The reading consumed many days, because of frequent silent meditations and constantly recurring references to the Law and to the Testimony. I could write much of this experience. But suffice it to say that I believe that these volumes present the only interpretation of the Holy Scriptures extant, that discovers the teachings of those sacred books to be at once harmonious and logical, symmetrical and complete, scientific and rational, satisfying alike the exactions of the intellect and the yearnings of the heart, and likewise offering the persistent disciple achievement of such exalted glory as to infinitely transcend the highest conceivable aspiration of the spirit – the new creature.

His return to Watch Tower theology was brief. Later that year Hickey abandoned his Watch Tower beliefs and associated with Paton’s Larger Hope Society, becoming pastor of a universalist church in Arlington New Jersey.[18] At the risk of psychoanalyzing the dead, we state that Hickey seems less than stable. He put himself in positions a more cautious individual may not have. His judgment seems impaired in key circumstances. But we really do not know. We don’t know why he was persuaded to adopt universalism. We are not likely to know either.

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[1]              His transfer to Brooklyn is noted in Minutes of the Fourth Annual Session of the Synod of New York, 1885, page 53. His transfer from Pennsylvania to Brooklyn is noted in Church Gleanings, The Christian Union¸ October 15, 1885, page 26. Temperance meetings: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 3, 1886, and The Newberg, New York, Daily Register, October 16, 1886. He was born March 13, 1855, in Rochester, New York. He died in New Jersey in 1917.

[2]              Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, March 1887, page 1.

[3]              Kind Words of Commendation: Zion’s Watch Tower, October 1886, page 8. [Not in Reprints.]

[4]              Another Chosen Vessel, Zion’s Watch Tower¸ September 1886, page 8.

[5]              Untitled article, The New York Tribune, June 5, 1886.

[6]              S. I. Hickey to C. T. Russell in the September 1887, issue of Zion’s Watch Tower, page  2. [Not in Reprints.]

[7]              Ecclesiastical Record: Presbyterian Monthly Record¸ September 1886, page 365.

[8]              Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, February 1887, page 7. [Not in Reprints.]

[9]              See Extracts from Interesting Letters, in that issue, page 2. [Not in Reprints.]

[10]            Letter from Hickey to Russell found in the August 1887 ZWT, page 2. [Not in Reprints.]

[11]            Letter from Hickey to Russell found in the May 1887, ZWT, page 8. [Not in Reprints.]

[12]            S. I. Hickey to C. T. Russell in the September 1887, issue of Zion’s Watch Tower, page  2. [Not in Reprints.]

[13]            ibid.

[14]            Presbyterians in Conference, The Rock Island, New York, Argus, May 18, 1889.

[15]            He Was Not Posted … Another Crank Causes a Sensation, The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Dispatch, May 18, 1889.

[16]            C. T. Russell: View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, June 1889, page 2.

[17]            Princeton Theological Seminary, 1909 list of Alumni; 1900 Census; Brooklyn, New York, directories for 1888 and 1889; Newark, New Jersey directory for 1901; R. S. Greenlee: The Stebbins Family Genealogy¸ Chicago, Illinois, 1904, Volume 2, page 897.

[18]            The Universalist Register for 1900, page 119.