Find a Grave

This article has grown out of several articles published in the past elsewhere. Its main purpose is to show photographs of headstones for people connected with Watch Tower history in some way, using the Find a Grave website. That site should be credited for the photographs, although I have also received permission from the original photographers to reproduce their work. So grateful thanks goes to Sherry, Doug, Shiver, MrsJB, JennO, Duane, blt, Neil, Chris, Mojo, Joann, Kathie and Beverley. In some cases the pictures used here are alternatives to those currently found on the site, simply because I didn’t need permission to use my own photographs.

Contacting those who originally took the photographs has had follow-on benefits. I have made contact on occasion with descendants of these people, some with tales to tell. On one occasion a long standing mystery was solved when the photographer kindly went back to the cemetery and took an additional photograph. This was the case of Malcom Rutherford (Judge Rutherford’s son) and his two marriages. The story is told in the series of articles on Malcom elsewhere on this blog.

Because permission has been granted for reproduction it means that readers can probably assume it is OK to copy on these pictures for non-commercial use if anyone so chooses. However, I would always recommend going back to the original source on Find a Grave as some pages contain further information on the individuals. And this is not static – new material is being added all the time to this resource. What wasn’t there for me to discover today could just be there for you to discover tomorrow. Also, I have only listed the headstones and names of individals and not the actual cemeteries in this article, but this information can easily be found on the Find a Grave site.

It is worth noting that there are some individuals connected with Watch Tower history who do not have headstones, but nonetheless have pages devoted to them on the Find a Grave site. However, in this article, apart from some paragraphs on the Staten Island Cemetery where no markers was a matter of policy, these are not covered. This article is, after all, about pictures. But I still recommend that you type in your name of choice and check. And things change. For example, when I first wrote this article there was no photograph of John Corbin Sunderlin’s headstone. Now there is. I say again - always check.

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

The Russell family

 Charles Taze Russell

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

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

 Father - Joseph L Russell

 The in-laws, Mahlon and Selena Ackley

 The wife - Maria Frances Russell

The sister in law and step-mother, Emma Russell

Before the Watch Tower

 Henry Grew

(no grave location known, but this is his death certificate)

 Benjamin Wilson

 Jonas Wendell

 George Stetson

 George Storrs

Nelson Barbour

Some of those who went their own way

 William H Conley (first Society president)

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

 John H Paton

 Hugh B Rice

 Arthur P Adams

 Otto Von Zech

Ernest C Henninges

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

Post-CTR

Nathan H Knorr and Frederick W Franz

Later years

The Society had its own cemetery, the Rosemont United Cemeteries, in Ross Township, Pittsburgh. Here CTR and a few Bethel family members and Pilgrims were buried, and their names inscribed on a pyramid monument that is still a tourist attraction today. The actual cemetery was sold off in 1917 with only a couple of small areas still reserved for Watch Tower adherents. However, shortly after the headquarters moved from Pittsburgh back to Brooklyn for the second time in 1919, the plan was to all intents and purposes abandoned. There was one burial in 1925, another in 1934 (CTR's sister), and then not until the 1940s were the remaining graves sold off. This cemetery will be the subject of future articles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only a few of those buried at Wallkill have photographs on Find a Grave. However, you can still check names. At the time of writing the site lists 175 graves.  But be warned that the list is not complete, and neither is it error free. For example, it lists the grave of A H MacMillan as being at Wallkill, whereas the Watchtower for 1966, page 608, clearly shows that he was buried at Staten Island. The same would be true of Giovanni DeCecca who died in 1965. These two, also imprisoned together back in 1918, were probably among the last to be interred at Woodrow Road.

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