1. Three Weddings (but no funeral this time)

Genealogical researchers in Britain are well and truly spoiled for resources when compared with other countries. Civil registration (where the State took over officially from the Church) was introduced in 1837. Theoretically, all births, marriages and deaths (hatched, matched and dispatched) have been centrally recorded and readily available in Britain since 1837. As for marriages, Hardwick’s marriage act of 1753 laid down a legal framework for marriages in England and Wales (sending some couples scurrying to Scotland) which at least gave standardisation and a better preservation of records.

In such a new and diverse country as the United States, this level of record keeping was not achieved in some places until the start of the 20^th century. This can make research difficult. Once you go back into the 19^th century (and beyond) in America you are generally at the mercy of ecclesiastical records. This presumes that scribes of yesteryear were both literate and conscientious, that damp and mice didn’t then destroy their handiwork, and when the churches in question disappeared that their records didn’t just disappear with them due to incompetence or disinterest. We have the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) and their teaching of vicarious baptism to thank for so many records being scanned and preserved for the benefit of all researchers. But even so, there are so many gaps. Maybe more records will be discovered and scanned. Maybe. But the further back in history you go, if we haven’t already got the material on sites like Family Search and Ancestry, then the chances are that the records – assuming they even properly existed originally – have gone for good.

This preamble is necessary because we are going to look at three marriages involving Charles Taze Russell’s family in the 19^th century. As yet we have no official surviving official records for any of them. So this article presents some detective work using other resources to establish within a few months when each event happened. The methods used may be of assistance in others’ research.

Joseph Lytle (or Lytel) Russell and Ann Eliza Birney

CTR's parents both came from Ireland originally, and the Watchtower Society's history video Faith in Action part 1 (Out of Darkness) suggested that they came over as a couple in 1845. The commentary states "it was in 1845 that Joseph and Ann Eliza Russell emigrated from Ireland to Pennsylvania, USA."

This is likely based on Joseph Lytle’s 1897 obituary which indeed says he came to America “about 1845.” However, obituaries have one built-in problem when it comes to accurate information – the one person who can verify the details is not there to do so. Many years ago in the pre-Internet age I found Joseph L’s naturalization record in the Society of Genealogists’ library in London. It was dated 1848. Obtaining a copy of the original document from the Prothonotary’s office in Pittsburgh, it plainly showed that Joseph swore an oath to the effect that he had been in the country for at least five years. That pushes his immigration back to at least 1843. In the article that follows this, Pittsburgh Presbyterians, we present even more proof that he was living in Pittsburgh in 1843.

You may need to enlarge this graphic to read it properly. It is reproduced here, even though the quality is poor, because microfilmed rolls of naturalization records for Pennsylvania on the Ancestry website omit this document. It is not there with all the other swearings held on 26 October 1848 and neither does it show up in the Ancestry index. But it exists, because here it is.

As for Ann Eliza, the Birney family was in America in the 1840s, although her brother’s obituary in 1899 is somewhat garbled. It suggests that Thomas came to America in 1821, which is actually his birth year. It also states that he joined the 2^nd Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh in 1845. A naturalization record exists for Thomas Birney in Allegheny Co., Penn. dated 8 October 1855, which likely ties in with the baptism of his children from 1857 onwards in 2^nd Presbyterian. Thomas Birney married Mary Ann Covell and they had six children baptised between 1857 and 1872, including one named after Ann Eliza.

The above facts about Joseph L Russell and Ann Eliza Birney would give a wide leeway for a marriage. However, we can fix the date down to just a couple of months due to other records, although some assumptions are made. The Pittsburgh Post carried a regular feature listing the names of people who should visit the post office to collect mail. A E Birney turns up in 1848. In the Pittsburgh Post for Saturday, July 1, 1848, page 2, there is a letter waiting for her.

It is reasonably safe to assume that this is Ann Eliza, single, in Pittsburgh in 1848. Even more conclusive is the entry the following year. The graphic below comes from the Pittsburgh Daily Post for Wednesday, April 4, 1849, page 2. This time we have a Ladies’ List and this time she is Miss A E Birney.

So Ann Eliza is in Pittsburgh and still single in March/April 1849, although this assumes her correspondent wasn’t someone ignorant of a marriage that had already taken place. But taking this at face value, Joseph L and Ann E travelled to America as singles and were not married until after March 1849.

Let’s now approach it from another angle. The 1850 census finds Joseph L and Ann E married with one child, T(homas), who is aged 5/12. Here is the entry below.

Some sources have transcribed Thomas’ age as 3/12 which would have made his birth around March of 1850, but this is an error. If we zoom in on this entry we can see clearly that the key number is a 5.

The rule for the 1850 census was that it should be a snapshot of how people were on June 1 that year. Assuming the enumerator followed this rule, if Thomas was five months old on June 1 then he was born either late December or early January. So he was conceived back in April/May, 1849, which was not long after Miss A E Birney was told to collect her mail from the post office. Maybe it related to an impending wedding.

It should be noted that there is conflicting information in the burial records for Thomas at the Allegheny cemetery. Thomas died on 11 August 1855 and the register says he was 5 years and 3 months when he died. If that were true, he would have been born in May 1850. That would mean that the census enumerator who recorded Joseph and Ann’s circumstances for June 1, 1850, mistook a new baby for a child of five months. That seems most unlikely. Since the burial register pages were copied up after the events any error would appear to be at that end of Thomas’ history – maybe confusing the numbers three and eight with the crabby handwriting of the day, which would take you back again to the January.

There is quite a bit of conjecture in the above calculations, but absent a baptism record it is the best we have.

Ann Eliza’s brother, Thomas, was a member of the 2^nd Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh (according to his obituary as noted above). It would be logical for the newly married Russells to be members there also.  A check of available church records has only one mention of Joseph L Russell – the sessions minutes have him being given a certificate of dismission on December 1, 1849. See the image below.

Deciphering the meaning with the help of the Presbyterian Historical Society shows this is our Joseph Lytle joining the 2nd Presbyterian Church around the time his first child was born in December 1849, having previously been a member of the 3rd Presbyterian Church. But there is no record of his marriage in surviving registers of either church. However, although Thomas Birney was a member of the 2^nd Presbyterian Church and had six children baptised there, the actual marriage of Thomas and Mary Ann is not in the register either. For more details of the Russell family’s religious history see the following article Pittsburgh Presbyterians.

But joining all the dots, Joseph L Russell likely married Ann Eliza Birney in the spring of 1849.

Charles Taze Russell and Maria Frances Ackley

Our second marriage is far easier to establish, in spite of an equal paucity of records. There is no register available with the details of CTR’s marriage to Maria Frances Ackley. However, on this occasion it was mentioned in the newspaper. From the Pittsburgh Daily Post for Saturday, March 15, 1879:

That meant the marriage took place on Thursday, March 13, 1879. The same announcement appeared in the Pittsburgh Gazette for Friday, March 14, 1879, which added the information that the wedding was conducted by Eld. J H Paton of Almont, Michigan.

Joseph Lytle Russell and Emma Hammond Ackley

CTR’s mother died in 1861. His father was to re-marry, and what would complicate family relations later, married CTR’s wife’s sister, Emma. Emma Ackley once she became Emma Russell was both CTR’s sister-in-law and step-mother.

In the late 1890s there was to be family estrangement when CTR advised his father on making his last will and testament, and provision was ultimately made for others, not just Emma. After Joseph’s death, Emma was to support Maria in her legal action against CTR, and the two women spent the rest of their lives together.

Although there are a few missing issues, a careful check of Pittsburgh newspapers did not yield any announcement of this union. And there are no known extant records giving a date. So again we have to narrow events down by other evidence.

The 1880 census was designed to provide a snapshot of events on June 1 that year. Below is the relevant entry for the Russell household, actually dated June 14, and well over a year after CTR and Maria were married.

It is not the clearest of writing but it shows four people living together in Cedar Avenue.

Russel (sic) C.T.          Aged 28                                 

Married           Occupation: merchant

Maria F                        Aged 29          Wife               

Married           Occupation: Keeps house

J L                               Aged 60          Father             

Widowed        Occupation: merchant

Ackley E.H.                Aged 26          Sister (*)         

Single              Occupation: at home

*This is difficult to read. It looks a bit like Sister (step) but the correct relationship to the head of the household, CTR, should be Sister (in law).

Joseph L has shaved a few years off his age. He was approaching 68 at this point, but only admits to 60.

According to this census return, at the beginning of June 1880 Joseph L and Emma are living at the same address but are still not married.  So their marriage would have to be after the date of the census.

Again let us approach it from another angle. Joseph L and Emma had one child named Mabel. Mabel ultimately married Richard Packard and they had three children. They are all found in the 1910 census where Mabel’s age is given as 31. The Family Search page for this census therefore gives her estimated birth year as 1879.

However, census returns are notoriously unreliable for dates. Before that Mabel had already specificied a birth year of 1881. When she married Richard Packard on June 30, 1903, she gave 1881 on the certificate and that is the date on her grave marker. (See Find a Grave and also her obituary in the St Petersburg Times for November 11, 1961).

What is interesting to note though is that her birth date on the marriage certificate is only partial. If you check the graphic below you can see what I mean.

Mabel does not give the day – just a line and then September 1881.

 A search on Ancestry gives the date September 16, 1881.  But on close checking everyone seems to be copying everyone else on this and no-one can provide a primary source for the information. It might just be on her death certificate (from 1962), but even then who is to say this is accurate, given that she appeared not to be sure when alive in 1903?

So personally, I would prefer to stick with the information we know Mabel supplied, “sometime” in September 1881. So let’s do the math again. If born in September 1881, she must have been conceived around December 1880. So we can assume her mother, Emma, was married sometime between the census of June 1880 and November/December 1880. With Joseph and Emma living under the same roof in the snapshot of June 1880, I would suspect that the marriage took place quite soon after that census was taken. As well as not knowing the exact date, we don’t know who conducted the wedding ceremony. John Paton was chosen to conduct CTR’s wedding in March 1879, so who was asked to conduct his father’s a little over a year later?

It would of course have been so much easier for researchers had they all got married in Britain or had just waited until the 20^th century in America.

However, that might have been a bit problematic for Joseph Lytle since he died in 1897…