Grave Matters

A new book has recently been published on the United Cemeteries, entitled GRAVE MATTERS. It is 170 pages and fully illustrated.

Some of the research first appeared online over a decade ago. Details of the book can be found on the Lulu site. Just visit Lulu Books, and specify LULU BOOKSTORE. The usual URL is: https://www.lulu.com/shop

Then in the search box type in GRAVE MATTERS. Just be careful because several other writers have used this title, but it should be obvious which one is the history book, with its pale blue cover (above) and description.

The blurb for the book is as follows:

The unusual story of the Watch Tower Society's own graveyard in Ross Township. Originally 90 acres, now just a small area remains associated with Watch Tower, including the grave of Charles Taze Russell. The account includes Russell's funeral, the tale of his sister who is buried alongside him, the Miracle Wheat episode (which was grown on site) and the background of the names engraved on the sides of a pyramid monument in the center of the site until recent years. Also, the strange story of "treasure" buried in the pyramid back in 1920 and what happened to it? Who would have thought that a small piece of land just 64 feet square would provide so much history.

Robison to Weber - 1912

This postcard above is from 1912 and was written in German by Frederick Robison to Adolf Weber during a return trip to America after a tour in Europe. (Image supplied by Franco).

A closer look at the message is below:

 

It reads:

"Lieber Bruder Weber: grüsse aus Irland. Die Reise des Comitees ist jetzt heimwärts gerichtet. Bald sind wir da. Deiner in Christo J.H.Robinson"

English translation:

Dear Brother Weber, greetings from Ireland, the journey of the Committee is now directed homeward, and soon we will be there, Yours in Christ, F H Robison.

(Editorial note: this was the return journey from the tour made by C T Russell and others investigating foreign missions. See Watch Tower for April 15, 1912. Weber had once worked as a gardener for CTR in Pittsburgh, afterward spearheading the work in his native Switzerland and Robison was to be one of the Brooklyn eight imprisoned in 1918.)

 

A Thin Seventh Volume

One edition of Studies in the Scriptures that is particularly collectable is the 7^th volume The Finished Mystery in its printings from 1927 onward. This was much thinner than previous editions, because half of the original contents were now omitted.

The forward in this printing is particularly interesting because it only mentions the work of Pastor Russell and C J Woodworth.

The original full-size 7^th volume not only covered the book of Revelation, as compiled by Clayton J Woodworth, but also the book of Ezekiel as compiled by George H Fisher. Fisher and Woodworth had been long time friends and worked on the project in the first half of 1917. Both were imprisoned as part of the Brooklyn Eight in 1918-1919. However, things changed in the 1920s and Fisher became distanced from the IBSA. (See the letter J F Rutherford wrote him as reproduced in full in the Golden Age for March 25, 1925, page 409.)

Fisher died in July 1926 and The New Era Enterprise carried a brief obituary in its issue for August 1926. His work on Ezekiel was now omitted from the 7^th volume. However, the whole volume was soon to be replaced by five new books - two on Revelation (Light volumes 1 and 2 in 1930) and three on Ezekiel (Vindication, volumes 1-3 in 1931-1932).

Grave Number 2095

 

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

The version I remember from the 1950s 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://jeromehistory.blogspot.com/2019/11/1-introduction-to-albert-delmont-jones.html) with his work with Charles Taze Russell, his magazines, his marriages, his fraudulant 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 – 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 beginning of February 1929 Albert moved into the New Castle 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 and the death certificate said he had been there for 1 year, 3 months and 12 days. He had been attended there by a doctor since the end of February 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, a bit akin to the British workhouse.

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 died there, and were usually buried in a nearby pauper’s cemetery generally called New Castle County Cemetery in the Woods at Farnworth.

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 it was thought that all records had been lost. However, in recent years the Death Book for 1926–1933 was rediscovered and painstakingly recorded in a database by Professor Kathy Dettwyler of Delaware University. The original register gives us the entry for Albert. Below, courtesy of the Delaware Records Office 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.

There is one quirk of fate to complete this tale. After editing a religious paper 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 sifted through all the entries in the New Castle Death Book to reveal 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 gender is given, and Baby Crompton is stillborn. But the original entry for grave 2095 shows that Baby Crompton, forever sharing Albert’s final resting place under the freeway, is BLACK.

There is a certain irony there.

Ernest Charles Henninges

Great Britain:              1900-1901

Germany:                    1903

Australia:                     1903-1909

Ernest Charles Henninges was born on 12 July, 1871. He became a Bible Student c. 1891. He married Rose Ball on 11 September 1897. He died on 2 February 1939.

He was a Society director from 4 January 1896 to 2 January 1909. During this time he was the secretary/treasurer of the Society on two occasions.

The first occasion was from 13 May 1898 to 12 February 1900. He then traveled to the United Kingdom to organize a branch there. He was in Britain from April 1900 to November 1901 (and can be found in the British census for 1901). Back in the States he again became secretary/treasurer from 2 February 1902 to 24 March 1903. He was then on his travels again, first to organize matters in Elberfeld, Germany, from June to October 1903, and then in Australia, arriving in Melbourne on 10 January 1904. His replacement as a director in January 1909 officially severed his relationship with CTR.

(Below) Group photo from first general convention 1893

(Below) Close up of Rose Ball and Ernest Henninges sitting on the grass in the front row of group photograph

(With grateful thanks to Bernard who supplied most of the dates)

"The Finished Mystery" and "Out of the Mouth of the Dragon."

The most controversial book ever published by the Bible Students was The Finished Mystery, a verse by verse commentary on Revelation and Ezekiel published in 1917. As well as some internal issues, it resulted in key Watch Tower headquarters staff being arrested in 1918, and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment under the Espionage Act of June 15, 1917. It should be noted at the outset, as most readers will already know, those imprisoned were released in 1919 and all charges against them were ultimately dropped.

But it was a testing time, and in dealing with the problems faced on a day by day basis, various editions of The Finished Mystery were produced. This article is going to look at one paragraph in several of them. For the record, in this article the initials JFR refer to the Society’s President, Joseph F Rutherford, and page numbers in brackets refer to specific pages in the trial transcript United States of America vs Joseph F Rutherford and others (1918).

For a fuller description of how the book came to be produced as a proposed seventh volume of the Studies in the Scriptures series, see the following article on Gertrude Seibert.

https://jeromehistory.blogspot.com/2020/04/1-gertrude-and-finished-mystery.html

The paragraph that caused the controversy was a discussion of Revelation 16:13 with the subheading “Come out of the mouth of the dragon.”

This defined patriotism as murder, “a narrow-minded hatred of other peoples” and “the spirit of the very Devil.”

The United States joined the World War on April 6, 1917, and was appealing to patriotism to recruit its army. Various religious figures supported this and came in for unsparing criticism in The Finished Mystery.

When the government objected to the book, especially pages 247-253 which included the offending paragraph, several steps were taken to calm down the situation. The printers were instructed to stop production (see JFR’s telegram on page 1309) and Bible Students were asked to physically cut out the offending pages from copies offered to the public (see Kingdom News no. 2).

Above is a copy with pages 247-254 excised. Written in pencil along the remaining stub of the pages is “to comply with government requirement.”

Later some replacement pages were printed for readers to fill the gap. Note the message at the top of the page: “These pages are to be inserted in lieu of the original pages 247-254, which were censored.”

The problem passage had now changed “patriotism” to “hatred” as shown below.

This was not the end of the revision because when replacement pages were actually bound back into the book at source, at some point in 1918 the wording changed subtly from “hatred” to “race hatred.”

The term “race hatred” could of course be applied to all sides in a conflict. That this would become the favored text is shown by The Watch Tower for June 1, 1920, which gives a whole five pages of suggested alterations which readers could make in their copies if they chose.

The notice does not reveal what wording was being replaced, whether “hatred” or the original “patriotism.” (There was yet another key variant which we will come to shortly). And even another revision in the final printings in the 1920s.

However, these amendments of 1917 and 1918 did not make the problem go away. In May 1918 eight members of the headquarters staff were arrested and charged with violating the 1917 Espionage Act. Repeatedly throughout the ensuing trial, the original words condemning “patriotism” were to be quoted by the prosecution.

Nonetheless, not all Bible Students appeared to be in full agreement with the original sentiments as expressed. From the trial transcript (page 552) cross examination of George Fisher by Counsel Isaac Oeland:

Q. Did this language meet with your approval that Satan deals with a certain delusion which is best described by the word, patriotism, but which is in reality murder, the spirit of the very devil; did that meet with your full approval?

A. No, sir.

Q. You knew Mr Woodworth had written that?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. You knew it was to be published and circulated in a book that you had helped to produce?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. And that you did not agree with it?

A. I did not agree with that because my conception of patriotism does not agree with that.

Fisher was still sent down with the other defendants, but would later leave fellowship with defendants Woodworth and Rutherford before his death in 1926.

There is one more element to the story, with yet another version of the offending passages.  In early 1918 a new version was proposed called the ZG. This was planned as a magazine edition of the book, as other volumes had been before. ZA for example was volume one, The Divine Plan of the Ages. G was the 7^th letter of the alphabet so the 7^th volume. This is highly collectable today and throws up some interesting questions.

It was dated March 1, 1918, but never released then. When instructions were given to remove pages from the 1917 book edition, Bible Students were also instructed NOT to circulate this magazine copy, and an alternative March 1, 1918, issue of The Watch Tower was published in its place. The September 15, 1918, Watch Tower reminded Bible Students not to circulate the ZG and referred back to an earlier notification given in the March.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Divine Purpose book on page 90 says that ZG had been printed before the war. For America that would have to be before April 6, 1917. If correct, that would make ZG the first edition, because the trial transcript reveals that the hardback edition was first printed in July 1917. It had mainly been written before the war started (JFR’s testimony on page 974) – that was a key point of the Society’s defense – apart from a few additions including a poem written by Gertrude Seibert (GWS) at the end of the Song of Solomon section and dated June 27, 1917. However, the contract with the Conkey Company for the first edition was only finalised at the end of June 1917 (page 1172) and then very quickly indeed the book was printed in the first half of July to be released at the Bethel on July 17. This was after America entered the war.

However, while the bulk of it was certainly written prior to America entering the war (which is the key point, as claimed in the WT for March 1, 1918 (article ‘Religious Intolerance’), the actual printing of ZG may have come later. The Divine Purpose book perhaps meant “written” rather than “printed” and the comment was never subsequently repeated.  As an indication of a later printing date, we have the date of March 1, 1918 on it. How much before intended publication was that decision taken? Also, on the actual Watch Tower cover of extant copies there was a message to send copies to soliders and sailors serving at the front once readers had finished with them. For this to make sense there would have to be Americans actually serving at the front at the time.

In reality it is a moot point, because as noted earlier the publication was pulled and the general issue of ZG did not see the light of day until 1920. (See The Watch Tower for July 1, 1920, page 199). At that time some copies had the original Watch Tower cover with the above message removed and a green title cover added in its place. (See Letter of Instruction to Directors in Bulletin for May 1, 1921). It should be noted that there was no mention of the ZG in the trial, which only focussed on the first edition, and continually kept quoting from that specific passage condemning patriotism. The trial had a lengthy examination and cross-examination of the manager of the Conkey Company who printed the hardback edition. Had ZG been in circulation it would have likely been used by the defense, because the offending passage about patriotism had not just been torn out, the text had been altered with a critical variant.

The change is most interesting, and would fit a publication intended for American soldiers. Instead of an attack on “patriotism” the ZG version substituted “Germany autocracy” and condemned German “human butchery.”

Other changes in this special edition were the removal of the verse by verse consideration of Song of Solomon along with Gertrude Seibert’s poem and the addition of a chapter taking readers verse by verse through the world powers of Daniel 7.

I am grateful to correspondent Gary who has put together information to suggest that the ZG edition, while mainly written before the war – which is not disputed – may have been printed in a very small window in March 1918. His words are printed in red.

Fred H. Robison was sent to visit Secretary of War Newton Baker on March 5, 1918, to see how their sudden objection to the publication could be resolved, He was intercepted en route by MID (military) agents who interrogated him instead and so he never got to see Baker. These quizzed him on the FM and he repeated that it had been completed prior to April 6, 1917. However, he was forced to back down when it was pointed out to him that it could not all have been completed prior to this time since the book included reference to seven billion dollars appropriated by Congress for the war; so, Robison acknowledged he must have been mistaken.

This ties in with Gertrude Seibert’s poem “written expressly for The Finished Mystery” being dated June 25, 1917, so it is evident that while, no doubt, most of the book was written prior to America’s entry into the war, some snippets was added after.

Robison never got to reach Newton Baker but took advice from those he met that “there was no disposition on the part of the Government (to) interfere with our work in general and that if pages 246-253, inclusive, were removed, there would be no known objection to the volume.” As a consequence, it is reasonable to conclude it was very shortly afterward that the the special ZG Watch Tower edition was printed.  As noted it adjusts the reference to patriotism and excludes the relevant passages from pages 247-253 which were largely quotes from two pacifist ministers. This strongly suggests its writing, printing and distribution to IBSA colporteurs and classes occurred almost immediately after Robison’s Washington episode on March 5, 1918, but prior to the Department of Justice banning distribution of the FM, in any form, as a violation of the Espionage Act just nine days later on March 14, 1918. The IBSA then immediately instructed colporteurs and class Secretaries to desist from selling the FM books and hold on to copies of the special ZG Watch Tower edition.

Thereafter, a belated normal edition of the Watch Tower dated March 1, 1918, was swiftly completed and sent out instead, but the fact that this was completed after the publication date is itself apparent since it makes reference to Woodward and Herr being arrested on March 4, Robison’s visit to Washington and then the banning of the book on March 14.

After the war the Brooklyn Eight were all released from prison and shortly thereafter all charges were dropped. Eventually the original text of the book was restored. Examining the 1924 boxed deluxe edition and also one of the final printings in 1927 (the 2,004,000 edition) it is noted that criticisms of “hatred” or “race hatred” or “German autocracy” had all disappeared. “Patriotism” was restored.

The book went out of print towards the end of the 1920s. A new explanation of Revelation and Ezekiel was to be given in Light (two books on Revelation in 1930) and Vindication (three books on Ezekiel in 1931-1932).

J F Rutherford visits home

We do not have the source of this leaflet or the date, but a little detective work strongly suggests that the talk was given on Wednesday evening, December 2, 1914. The blurb shows the talk was given after the start of World War 1 in 1914. The subject matter would not have gone down so well after America entered the war in 1917, by which time, JFR was very much occupied in New York. Although it has not been possible to find a newspaper report of the talk in Versailles, JFR was featured in several newspaper reports giving the same talk in St Louis, Missouri, in the last week of November 1914. By road today the distance between the two locations is about 170 miles and there is a good rail link.

Elie Jerville

 Elie Jerville was a French Bible Student who was well-known in his day. A correspondent kindly sent me some material Jerville received between 1909-1914.

He is reportedly mentioned in the French edition of Watch Tower in July 1910 (attending a meeting) and March 1911 (speaking at the funeral of J B Tillman). There is also a letter from him in the standard American issue of Watch Tower for June 15, 1916 (reprints page 5915). Under the heading LETTERS FROM FRENCH BRETHREN Jerville wrote:

"In accordance with the invitation of dear Brother Russell in his wonderful and comforting article on "Divine Love," published in the last July French TOWER, I am intending to write to him.

"May the God of all grace and peace be with each of you in your activity for the Lord's cause, till by and by above we shall sing an everlasting alleluia to the honor and glory of our great Creator!

ELIE JERVILLE, Corporal at Bailleul.--Northern France."

Jerville survived the war, but appears to have left fellowship with the parent Watch Tower/IBSA after the death of CTR.

In reverse order below, there is a letter written by CTR to Jerville in 1914. Dated 22 July 1914, there is an error in the address, the city is not Rouboix but Roubaix, but the letter obviously reached its destination.

Prior to this letter, Jerville received a postcard dated March 23, 1913, which is signed by three names, Weber, Boillet and Freytag.

Prior to this postcard, Jerville received a postcard , dated February 6, 1909, signed by (Adolphe) Weber.

I am afraid that I failed all my exams in the French language very many years ago, but some enterprising reader might like to copy the cards, increase their size to make them readable and translate for us.

A Brief Change...

 ...from all this serious research...

A sad tale noted in the Bible Students' newspaper, the St Paul Enterprise, involving Miracle Wheat, a monogrammed car, and locals diversifying from cattle rustling and horse stealing.

 

Alas, I do not know whether he ever got his car back.

Watch Tower Publications - A Celebration

An introduction to what never was…

This material is a slight abridgment of material that was originally written OVER 30 YEARS AGO, as the forward to a bibliography of the publications of the Watchtower Society. I amassed a wealth of material, but the project never saw the light of the day. I tend to be a good starter, but not a good finisher. However, all the research was freely passed onto others who enquired, so it didn’t get wasted. More recent compilers like Stan Milosevic in Canada have produced useful works like Watchtower Publications Valuations Guide. I wouldn’t necessarily concur with all the valuations, but apart from not listing all the Bible Student Monthly tracts (under their three mastheads) it is quite comprehensive.

It was hidden away on my hard drive (through various computers) for decades, and only rediscovered by accident in a long overdue “clear out” of dead files. I would normally have consigned it to oblivion again, but noted that there are some snippets of history in it - about strange booklets, Angels and Women, Rutherford’s Ecclesiastical Heavens booklet, amongst others, and also some comments on attitudes of the time (largely superseded in modern times I am pleased to note). So, as a filler, I am letting it see the surprising light of day here. But please note that it was written just after the Watchtower Society’s 1990 index was produced, but before the Proclaimers book was released in 1993, so is a time capsule of the early 1990s. It also uses the expression “the Society” quite often, whereas modern nomenclature favors the expression “the organization.”

Introduction to “Watch Tower Publications - A Celebration”

One of the problems with introductions is that very few people ever bother to read them, preferring to skip straight into the body of the work, in this case what is to date the most comprehensive bibliography of the publications of the Watchtower Society.

To understand what follows, and why certain things are included (or excluded) and the basic purpose of this volume a few minutes reading what follows will not be wasted.

The basis for the work

The basic starting point for this work is the organization's own bibliographies – the most detailed of which to date was recently published in the Publications Index 1985-90. There are a few occasions where this work will change categories slightly – e.g. the difference between a booklet or a brochure – but the organization's listing is closely followed otherwise.

However, the current work is designed to ADD a lot of detail not available before.

Many tracts for example are not listed at all in the Society's bibliography, or if they are, just the title of the series, e.g., Bible Students Monthly. Yet that was a series of over 100 different four page tracts. This work will list them all. Then when is a tract not a tract but just a handbill or leaflet? Both are used in mass-distribution witnessing work. This work will include many other items that SEEM to qualify as tracts, and this of course will be a list to which many readers could easily add.

This work proposes to catalogue some of the ephemera, postcards, public talk handbills and outlines, forms, etc. There is a special section on BEFORE THE WATCHTOWER, covering some pre-1879 materials that are of interest to many collectors. There is a section on the Society's films, with a special section on the PHOTO DRAMA OF CREATION listing full details of the slides, moving pictures and recordings. Slides presentations and videos are also catalogued in the audio-visual section

Why collect?

In the past, some have tended to frown on collectors. Statements like 'You don't want to bother with that" or 'You need to keep up-to-date" have suggested that real collectors have somehow stayed in a time-warp, surrounded by yellowed Golden Age magazines, rarely sharing in current activities, and more likely to have studied their Old Theology Quarterly file than modern literature. It must be stressed of course that browsing through history is generally NOT what most would term “personal study,” but is a leisure activity. But if a collector turns off the TV and rearranges the dust on old materials with care, then that is their leisure activity, and who should criticize?

Criticisms of collecting have largely disappeared as the organization has more and more encouraged witnesses to collect in some shape or form old material. They did this when they republished the Watchtower volumes back to 1951, and then the CD-ROM material back to 1950. Their own published indexes will take a researcher back to 1930 – there has to be an assumption that, while the more recent references will be more used, once in a while someone really IS going back to the 1930s. Then a book like Revelation Climax has over 40 pre-1930 references. All these factors make collecting USEFUL, as well as enjoyable for those who are natural collectors!

And collecting is not just the books and magazines.

To get an insight into the flavor of the past, the EPHEMERA of an era has a vital role throwaway material has tremendous value decades on in recreating what it was REALLY like at the time.

The organization has naturally not kept all its ephemera – the very nature of ephemera is that it is not valued as permanent at the time. Although they are now far more conscious of preserving history, even in recent times Bethel has had to rely heavily on private collectors to supply the materials. The value of private collections goes back a long way. When the reprint volumes were first proposed, the troubles of 1918 had decimated their library. Those at headquarters did not even have a complete file of magazines and had to rely on private collectors to lend the missing issues. Private collectors of course did so and so the project could be realized. Until recently there were four issues of Old Theology Quarterly for which the organization did not know the titles. Again private collectors helped fill the gaps and supplied photocopies.

So if you are a collector you will need no encouragement to 'save it' – who knows, one day it may prove useful. If of course you are not a collector, then you will not be reading this anyway.

Previous attempts

There have been several previous attempts to produce bibliographies of this material. But earlier efforts, including the Society's own, starting with the 1930-60 Index, have contained inaccuracies, and in some cases it appears that writers have 'invented' publications, or at least passed on the errors of others.

A classic example is one bibliography that lists a number of booklets that no-one has ever been able to find. The problem can be traced back to the bibliography published by H H Stroup in his work Jehovah’s Witnesses published first in 1945, as an early attempt as a sociological study. Stroup quoted extensively from the then more current works of J F Rutherford, but unfortunately used the titles of the individual treatise rather than the titles of the booklets. To explain, most Rutherford booklets contained a series of titles on different subjects, the first of which became the cover title for the whole booklet. But when Stroup quoted from a Rutherford treatise, he used the title at the top of the page as if it were the title of the whole publication – which generally, it wasn’t.

Here are some Stroup examples of this.

Stroup title in his bibliography   Jehovah's Organization (1932) Hypocrisy (1932) Prophets Foretell Redemption (1932) Can American Government Endure (1933) JWs - Why Persecuted (1933) America's End (1934) Justifying War (1934) Religions (1934) Marriage (1936) Why Serve Jehovah (1936 wrong date)

Actually a chapter within booklet:   The Final War Cause of Death Good News The Crisis The Crisis Supremacy Beyond the Grave Beyond the Grave Home and Happiness Dividing the People (pub 1933)

These mysterious missing booklets sent many collectors off on a wild goose chase for booklets that don’t exist as such – and some later “compilers” subsequently repeated Stroup’s error. (It also illustrates the fact that many collectors don't actually read their collections – if they had done so, the problem would have quickly been solved).

The Society's own bibliography first appeared in 1960 in their 1930-1960 index. It was a start. There were many omissions, and some anomalies such as the date 1873 for Object and Manner of Our Lord’s Return. But as noted above, the current index is still limited. For example, what are all the titles for Peoples Pulpit, Everybody’s Paper and Bible Students Monthly? 

There are other problems to address as well. What is an official publication and what isn't? Theoretically, the obvious answer is when it has the name Watchtower, or IBSA, or People’s Pulpit on the flyleaf. But it is not that simple. A number of Bible Students and witnesses have published their own material, which has been actively circulated by the Society or at least been given tacit approval at the time. There have also been occasions where Society material has been published under a different imprint. So we get publications like Angelophone Hymns from 1916. This is so obviously a Watch Tower publication from references in the literature of the times, but was published from a different address. Then what about Angels and Women? This is a republication of a Victorian novel that the Society endorsed in 1924, but published by the A.B. ABAC Company. More crucially, what about Great Battle in Ecclesiastical Heavens? This famous booklet by J F Rutherford defending C T Russell is NOT listed as a Watchtower publication in the latest index because the American edition was published privately by J F Rutherford - although still available on the official society's cost list. (Just to add to the confusion however, the British edition WAS published by the Society). In this  latter instance we have included it as a Society publication, whereas Rutherford's earlier work Plan of Salvation as Seen from a Lawyer’s Viewpoint is not included as official. More recent cases in point are works by Marley Cole and A H MacMillan. In these cases we have made a personal decision whether to include them or not.  On most occasions we have followed the organization's decision and omitted them from the main listing, but have included them in a special section called FRINGE ITEMS. Such a list has to be the personal choice of this compiler, so obviously will appear incomplete to some.

Finally, the title of this work is to stress the expression A CELEBRATION. It is the firm belief of this compiler that ALL the publications of the Society have done a work in their time and all tell part of the story. For those who wish to collect the story it is hoped this descriptive bibliography and its illustrations will be helpful.