If you recently bought Bernhard's book on Bible House, there is now an extra section of material that will be incorporated into future editions, relating to different items found in CTR's study. It totals nine pages.
If you would like to contact Bernhard direct (his email is on the title page of the book) he will send this additional material to you.
Some of us collect books. Some of us collect newspapers, postcards, magazines and ephemera, all in connection with a love of early “truth” history. But an added dimension for those with the contacts – and the house space – is collecting furniture.
This is the brief story
of Pastor Russell’s chair.
The familiar photograph
of CTR in his study at the Bible House shows him sitting at his desk in a high
padded chair. When everything moved from Allegheny to Brooklyn in 1909, a
number of items were passed on to others. This appears to have been the case
with the chair.
For many years the custodian of the chair was Martin C Mitchell. Mitchell was born in 1895. He may have worked at the Bible House in his early teens. We know he was immersed in 1910 at the age of 15. During World War 1 he claimed exemption as a conscientious objector associated with the IBSA.
Mitchell lived until 1974, and after his wife died, the chair passed on to others. It now belongs to Brian K who took the following photographs and has given permission for me to reproduce them here. The condition reflects that many have wanted to try it out over the years!
Rotating the chair will make it raise or lower, much like a circular piano bench. It also reclines as well as swivels. The current owner got brave and sat in it and leaned back. However, not too far.
With apologies to The Sound of Music.
1. The
family background
2.
The
early years
3.
After
1870
First, a little bit about the back story of the Ackley family.
Mahlon Foster Ackley (1807-1873) was born in New Jersey. Selena Ann Hammond (1815-1901) was born in Philadelphia. They married and their children were all born in Allegheny. Of the five who survived to adulthood, Maria was in the middle. She had two older sisters, Laura and Selena, and a younger sister and brother, Emma and Lemuel.
Some
biographical material about Maria’s parents can be found in Selena Ann Hammond
Ackley’s obituary from 1901.
The Ackley family history site also quotes another couple of obituaries (unidentified) which provides the following extra information:
“She journeyed by stage and canal with her mother to Johnstown, Pa, where she was married to the late Mahlon F Ackley of Allegheny, who was employed on the Pennsylvania railroad, which was then in the process of construction. Early in the 1840s she came to Allegheny with her husband and had resided there ever since. She saw the city grow from a straggling village to a metropolis. Mrs Ackley was for many years a member of the North Avenue Methodist Episcopal church, and before the formation of that church was, with her late husband, connected with the Arch Street church of the same denomination.”
The
1850 and 1860 census returns list Mahlon as a carpenter and in 1870 as a car
maker.
As well as giving her history, Selena’s obituary also gave details of her five surviving children in 1901. Taking them in order of birth they were, Laura J Raynor (1839-1917), widow of Henry Raynor who died in 1873. Selena A Barto (1848-1929), widow of Baptist minister, Charles Edmund Barto who died in 1883. Then we have Maria Frances Ackley (1850-1938) and Emma Hammond Ackley (1855-1929). And finally there was Lemuel Mahlon Ackley (1857-1921), who became a lawyer in Chicago. Maria went to him first when she left CTR. Lemuel died quite spectacularly when a disgruntled defendant shot him in a courtroom in 1921.
Laura Ackley became a dressmaker before she married. Selena Ackley became a teacher and Maria followed Selena to become a teacher as well.
In
the 1870 census both girls (Selena aged 22 and Maria aged 19) are listed as
teachers.
Selena
(with variant spelling Salina) Ackley is mentioned in the Pittsburgh Daily
Commercial for July 24, 1868. At a meeting of the Board of School Directors of
the Reserve Independent School District she is elected to work as Assistant in
the Spring Garden School.
However, Selena would leave the teaching profession on marrying Baptist minister, Charles Barto. We don’t have a date for their marriage, but their first child was born in 1873. Years later as a widow with two adult children she listed herself as “private teacher” in a census return.
This means we can safely assume that all references to “Miss Ackley” as a teacher in Allegheny or Pittsburgh for the period 1872-1879 refer to Maria.
Maria was asked about her schooling in the 1907 court hearing. She said she had been educated at the High School, Pittsburgh, and then at the Curry Normal School. The latter was for teacher training. It may not be connected but early ZWT meetings c.1880 took place at the Curry Institute.
There are a number of newspaper references in Pittsburgh papers to Maria Ackley, M F Ackley and Miss Ackley, all in connection with teaching.
In the next article we will look at her teaching history, such as it was, prior to 1870.
There are fleeting references to Maria as a child in census returns, but she comes into her own from around 1867. As a teenager (although I don’t think they had been invented back then) Maria received what appears to be her first teaching post. From the Pittsburgh Daily Commercial Newspaper, September 4, 1867 issue, page 4.
It says concerning nominations of the Local Board of the First ward…”Miss Bella Cunningham and Miss Maria Ackley were elected: to fill vacancies occasioned by the resignation of Miss Kate Patterson and Miss M. J. McClain, of the boys' first and second primary department. The nominations were confirmed."
It is interesting that it says she was elected, not moved from another location, which suggests this was her very first teaching post. She was 17.
As Pittsburgh was a boom town with a rapidly rising population there was a need for more schools and more teachers. The Normal School Act of 1857 established training schools for teachers. In Maria’s era there were two in Pittsburgh, the State Normal School at Central High and the privately run Curry Institute. The course was around six months duration and the program concentrated on the 3 R’s – reading, writing and (a)rithmetric. After 1870 the training of teachers became longer and more specialized.
As
explained in her testimony in Russell vs. Russell (1907) Maria trained at the
Curry Institute. That this had a very good reputation was expressed in this
extract from the Report of the Superintendent of Common Schools (published 1866
but relating to the year ending in June 1865). From page 42:
The
previous page (page 41) showed that teacher examinations were held once a year,
and ran over a three day period. Successful candidates could be granted either
a provisional or professional certificate. The Superintendent’s Report for 1865
reviewed the potential intake that year in Pittsburgh. Forty sat the exam. Ten
failed it. Out of the thirty who passed only ten were granted a full
professional certificate, leaving twenty with provisional ones. The reason for
the latter was explained in the report:
Maria
would have sat the exam a little later than this particular report, but it is
safe to say that she would have been granted a provisional certificate for her
first teaching post at the age of 17. This meant that she was now classed as a
teacher and would appear in the Pittsburgh directories as such. These
directories published the names of all teachers in all the schools. In the 1868
directory we find Maria listed as a teacher in the First Ward School.
It is just possible that Maria may have appeared in the 1867 issue, but some pages are missing from the extant copy, so the 1868 reference is the first we have.
Maria continued to appear in the directory each year for the First Ward School until 1871. Thereafter the format of the directory changed and individual teachers were no longer listed for schools.
The
1865 superintendant’s report made the point that, after gaining sufficient
experience, a teacher could move up from a provisional certificate to a full
professional one, without having to sit the exam again. Maria obtained her full
professional certificate in 1870, and details of this were published in the
October 1870 issue of the Pennsylvania School Journal. She received certificate
number 660.
Now
that she was fully qualified by the standards of the day she was able to branch
out, as her subsequent teaching career showed.
Maria’s personal skills began to be highlighted in the local papers. The Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette for June 24, 1871 described a meeting of the Allegheny Teachers association where Maria gave what amounted to a lecture on public speaking.
Maria’s speaking ability would stand her in good stead many years later when she went on the road to defend CTR in the 1894 troubles.
Maria gave another lecture the following year. From the Pittsburgh Daily Commercial for April 3, 1872 – from the annual meeting of the Allegheny County Teachers’ Institute (Second Day) “In the evening, Miss Mariah Ackley read an essay entitled Will It Pay?”
Two more references from 1872. The Pittsburgh Daily Post for June 20, 1872 – “the following teachers have been elected for the 19th ward public schools: Grammar, Miss Lyons and Miss Ackley.”
Then
the Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette for July 27, 1872 – “Miss T (?) Ackley was
elected teacher to fill the vacancy in Room no. 7 of the North Avenue
building.”
1873
adds another dimension to Maria’s work when she is now elected as a Sunday
School Teacher. From the Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette for April 5, 1873:
Three
years later she is still teaching in Sunday School and is given a pin-cushion
to show appreciation. From the Pittsburgh Daily Commercial for January 4, 1876:
In 1877 she is mentioned in the teacher elections for the public schools.
She is elected as Marie F Ackley for the North Avenue School. Also elected is a Mary D Lecky. We will come back to her shortly.
However, not all was plain sailing in the teaching profession. In early 1878 Maria was accused of assaulting a pupil. It made the newspapers. From the Pittsburgh Daily Post for January 19, 1878:
It
appears that her fellow teacher in the North Avenue School, Mary Lecky, was
concerned that someone might think it meant HER. There was a hasty bit of
damage limitation. The Pittsburgh Daily Post for January 22, 1978, carried a
clarification:
Putting this in context, we must remember that corporal punishment was allowed at this time and the complaint may have been malicious. However, for a 27 year old female teacher to be accused of “cruelling whipping” a 12 year old boy still seems unsual. Those who enjoy cooincidences may like to note that the name of the pupil on the receiving end was Knorr. Don’t worry – it has been followed up. While the famous Knorr family of Watch Tower history came from Pennsylvania, it was a different part of the State and also a different era.
There is no information in the newspapers as to how the investigation turned out, but we must assume Maria was cleared of misconduct. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for July 3, 1878 carried a report of the latest election of teachers. For the Second Ward, North Avenue School, Marie F Ackley was elected again; as was Mary Lecky.
However, with that kind of experience and after a decade of teaching (with more of the same old same old looming ahead) perhaps Maria was getting tired of it all. Getting married, as her two older sisters had done before her – that was the normal escape route for a single woman.
On
March 13, 1879, she married Charles Taze Russell.
