2 - Malcom in the Manna

Daily Heavenly Manna for the Household of Faith and Birthday Record was published in 1907 and contained the equivilent of a day’s text and comments, alongside blank pages allowing for the addition of Bible Student autographs and addressses on their relevant birthdays. Old copies are highly collectable, not generally for the books themselves but for the autographs found inside them. You need no further proof that Malcom Rutherford considered himself a Bible Student than to find he had voluntarily signed one of these books.

Collector Mike C, who has nearly 40 copies of this book at last counting, kindly searched and found me Malcom’s name in a Manna belonging to Edward Brenneisen, a Bible Student with a high profile at the time.

His copy of the Manna has the inscription: “To Bro E.W. Brenneison with Christian love of the class at Vancouver, B.C. Sept – 11^th 1907.” It is one of the 40^th thousand edition, which means an early printing for a Manna.

Edward William Brenneisen (1874-1956), pictured above with CTR, was a Bible Student who stayed with the Watch Tower Society. He worked for the W B Conkey Co. printing company, which among other projects printed Angels and Women in 1924. The spelling of his name later evolved into Brenisen.

Malcom’s signature is found on his birth date, November 10.  Here is the entry:

A closer look at the four signatures in this copy has Malcom as the fourth.

We can try and enhance the signature to make it more readable as the ink has faded.

We can now see that he signed as M C Rutherford, Boonville, ’92.

Malcom’s mother Mary’s signature is in the same book on her birthdate (August 17). JFR is not there, but as he was away on Pilgrim work from June 1907 it was more than likely that Mary and Malcom attended some function, a meeting, a convention, on their own, and there signed Brenneisen’s Manna.

If by signing ‘Boonville’ Malcom was indicating where they were based, then this autograph dates from between 1907 when the book was published and 1909, at which point they all moved to Brooklyn. By the 1910 census they were all living in the Brooklyn Bethel. As it happened, Edward Brenneisen was there in that census too.