Guest post by Bernhard
(edited by Jerome)
When Charles T. Russell became president of Zion’s
Watch Tower Tract Society, on December 15, 1884, his wife Maria Frances became
secretary and treasurer. In general, she was his secretary, who proofread his
manuscripts and did the usual work of an office assistant. On some chapters in
the Millennial Dawn series she co-labored with Charles in arranging them in
final form and especially so for volume IV, which consisted largely of
quotations from newspaper clippings which they had selected for some years. In
evaluating the true function of Maria, it appears that she acted in the
capacity of special assistant to Charles as his loyal wife. She was studious,
college trained, and capable in her own right. No doubt Charles utilized her
talents to the fullest, not only in secretarial functions, but in acting as
organizer and arranger of his manuscript notes.
When Maria separated from Charles in November 1897,
he needed another secretary, and this was Ernest C. Henninges.
Ernest was born on July 12, 1871 in Cuyahoga
(Cleveland) Ohio and died on February 3, 1939 in Victoria, Australia. His
father Emil Henninges (1828 – 1892) came from Germany. His mother Kate was born
1840 in Ohio. He had one brother George (born 1858). Ernest’s profession was
teaching music in Cleveland at 44 Euclid Avenue.
After he joined the Bible Students he moved to
Allegheny in 1891 to work and live in the Bible House. On January 4, 1896, he
replaced James Augustus Weimar as a director of the Zion’s Watch Tower Tract
Society and in May 13, 1898, 6 months after Maria left the Bible House, Ernest
succeeded her as secretary-treasurer. Russell trusted him a lot.
In the Bible House also lived Rose Ball, the foster
child of Charles T. and Maria Russell. On September 11, 1897, Ernest and Rose
were married at Buffalo, Erie, New York, where her parents Richard J. Ball and
Elizabeth Ball still lived.
At the beginning of 1900, Russell planned to send
Ernest and Rose Henninges to England to open an office for the Society. So it
was clear that another brother needed to become secretary-treasurer, and this
was Otto Albert Koetitz on February 12, 1900, and also another brother, Albert
E. Williamson, became Russell’s private secretary. Ernest remained a
director.
In April 1900 Ernest and Rose travelled to
Liverpool and then to London, where they opened on April 23, the first office
outside the United States, at 131 Gipsy Lane, Forest Gate. They stayed
there until November 1, 1901, and then came back to Allegheny. Ernest again
became treasurer of the Society on February 12, 1902 and remained such until
March 24, 1903. On that date William Van Amburgh became treasurer. In March
1903 Ernest and Rose travelled to Elberfeld (Wuppertal), Germany, and again
opened an office for the Society in June 1903. They stayed there until October
and then went to Melbourne, Australia, arriving on January 10, 1904.
In 1908 some internal troubles surfaced. James Hezekiah Giesey, Watch Tower vice-president and well-known Pittsburgh architect, along with long time director Simon Osborne Blunden, resigned as Society directors in June. Albert Williamson followed in September. Henninges also resigned as a director in January 1909, and he and his wife left Russell and the Bible Students in the spring of 1909. Henninges founded a new group and journal called “New Covenant Advocate” in Australia and those in America like Giesey, Williamson, along with hymn writer M.L. Mc Phail, formed a similar breakaway group.
Albert Williamson
was born on February 13, 1878 in Oneida Township, Haldimand, Balloville,
Ontario, Canada. He was the son of James and Elizabeth Bayly (born 1839) and he had a twin brother Frederik William and also a sister Annie. Albert married
Hattie (Harriet) Stark (born Allegheny, December 1879) a member of the Bible
House family on December 5, 1905. She lived there with her mother Britee C.
Stark. Albert and Harriet had three daughters Dorothy Eleanor (September
9, 1911), Elizabeth K. (1916) and Edith Anna (1920).
He became a member
of the Bible House staff in 1899, along with his mother, and later, in 1905,
his brother Fred. On February 12, 1900 he became a Watch Tower Society
director. He resigned on September 28, 1908. Interesting is that his twin
brother Frederick William replaced him as a Society director for one year.
When Ernest C.
Henninges travelled to England in April 1900, Albert Edmund Williamson replaced
him as Russell‘s private secretary.
The
"Crittenden Record, Kentucky“, for February 8, 1907, contained a report
about a talk Williamson gave. Under the heading: THE END OF THE WORLD IS
NEAR AT HAND it explained: “October 1914 is the date set for the end to
come. The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of
Alleghany, Penn., through Mr. A. Edmund Williamson, announce the above date to
be the beginning of the millennium. Mr. Williamson, who is secretary to Charles
T. Russell, head of the society, did not, however, announce that there would be
a general conflagration of the earth and an incineration of all the wicked on
that date, but rather a "great change.""
Williamson was a
very eloquent speaker, but more important was his skill as a stenographer.
Russell wrote about him (Souvenir Convention Report from 1908): "In my publishing
office we have ten stenoographers, but only one of them could serve in such an
emergency—Mr. Williamson—and he consented to assist also. So far as I know none
of these gentlemen expect or have received pay for the service, and only Mr.
Williamson even has his expenses provided.“ Also in 1908 Russell wrote
that he received about 500 letters every Monday and the rest of the week from
250 to 300 a day. So there was a lot of work for him and his secretary.
Sadly in late 1908 Williamson decided to leave the Bible House, but not only the house, he also split from Russell in early 1909. He died in March 1956, when he lived in Essex, West Orange, New Jersey.
Much of Robison‘s
history comes from Robison’s obituary in the Concordant Version magazine
“Unsearchable Riches“ in 1932, because he was to leave association with the
IBSA in 1922. He was born on February 3, 1885 in Greenwood, Indiana and died
April 17, 1932 in Manhattan, New York. He was the only son
of James A. Robison (1859-1949) and Eva J. Whitenack (1862-1955), of Oakland,
California. He had two sisters named Bartha B. and May E. It was there that he
spent his youth, graduating from high school at the age of fourteen. It was
about this time that he affiliated with the Disciples of Christ. He entered
Franklin College to continue his education and there further displayed an
aptitude for languages in the study of New Testament Greek.
Later he went to Canada and took out a claim in the
Rainy River district of Ontario. He resided there about one year, teaching part
time and part time employed in the immigration service. He returned to Indiana
in 1904 and entered Butler College in Indianapolis, remaining there until the
opening of Winona Technical Institute, also in Indianapolis, and enrolled there
as a student of lithography that he might be equipped not only for his present
need, but to have the knowledge of a trade, for use in the missionary field. It
was his purpose to carry the gospel to Japan independently.
With a year's
instruction at the John Herrin Art Institute in Indianapolis and some knowledge
of chemistry to his credit, he made splendid progress and in less than two
years accepted a position as poster artist in one of the largest lithographing
houses in the United States, located at Cleveland, Ohio. He became one of their
foremen in charge of artists. It was while in this position that he pursued the
reading of Pastor Russell's works, having become slightly interested during his
sojourn in Canada. During all this time his linguistic talents were being
exercised more or less in the attainment of a knowledge of Spanish, French and German,
as well as New Testament Greek. After reading Pastor Russell's works, he
employed a Japanese friend to translate some of the literature into Japanese,
still thinking of the foreign mission field, but later abandoned this to become
a home missionary, as a colporteur for Pastor Russell's works.
After about one
year in this new field of endeavor, he prepared for secretarial service and was
called to the Bible House in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. It was there that he met
Miss Almeta Nation, whom he married on March 25, 1909. He became private
secretary to Pastor Russell and held that position until after the Society's
offices were transferred to Brooklyn, New York, in 1909. As private secretary
to Pastor Russell he accompanied him on a trip around the world (December 1911
– March 1912) with a committee sent to investigate foreign missions. Japan was
one of the places visited.
On his return,
Robison became secretary of the foreign work and he had a good opportunity for
pursuing the study of languages. His obituary stated that he could translate
twenty-three in all, giving discourses in German, Greek, and English. He made
week-end pilgrimages in and about New York City, addressing both public and
private gatherings.
Robison was one of
four men designated in Russell‘s will to be co-editors of the Watch Tower.
Apart from when imprisoned with J F Rutherford and others in 1918-1919, he was
one of the Watch Tower’s editorial committee until the spring of 1922 when he
resigned and went to Washington, D. C., to accept secular work as a commercial
artist in the art department of the Washington Post. He afterwards served the
government and later became art director for the American Automobile
Association, with headquarters in Washington, D. C. He returned to work in New
York in 1931, and died on April 17, 1932.
When the first
installment of the literal Bible translation “The Concordant Version” was
issued it came to the attention of the Society’s headquarters. As the plates of
the Emphatic Diaglott were worn out, they were looking for something to replace
it, and Robison was delegated to call on the Concordant Publishing Concern in
Los Angeles with a view to placing it on the Society's list of literature. A
small booklet of the Concordant translation of Revelation was advertised in the
Watch Tower for June 15, 1920, but then was dropped in early 1921.
The contact with the Concordant version group, who were Universalists, led to Robison leaving association with the IBSA, resigning from the Watch Tower editorial committee and as an elder of the New York congregation. He spent the rest of the 1920s supporting the Concordant cause and trying to attract his former IBSA associates to it. (For a fuller description of what happened and how the Watch Tower Society dealt with it, use the search facility to see an old article on this blog: The Watchtower and Universalism – the Almont Connection.)
Menta Sturgeon was born 1866/67 in Missouri and died on August 17,
1935. He married Florence A. (born 1871 in Massachusetts) in 1888 and they had
one son Gordon (born 1899).
Sturgeon graduated from the Theological Seminary of
the Southern Baptist Church and studied Greek and Hebrew. In the late 1880s, he
worked for the Kansas & Texas Coal Company, and lived at 4001 N. B 'Way,
St. Louis, Missouri. In March 1897 the members of his church unanimously
appointed him a pastor, a position he assumed until his resignation in 1904. He
was reverend of a Baptist Church in the city, the Tower Grove Baptist Church,
located at 4320 avenue. However, he left the church after internal dissension.
He came into contact with Russell's teachings in
1894 through a small book handed to him by his physician, but it was only 14
years later that he attended his teaching when he attended readings Biblical
records given by the pastor at Arch Street: first as a simple listener, then as
the pastor's interlocutor. In the meantime, he preached independently, and then
added his own disciples to Russell's group. Finally, he received a letter from
the pastor asking him if he could become a lecturer for him, which Sturgeon
accepted, and so in 1909 he left the society in which he worked; apparently it
was the Blackmer & Post Pipe Company.
He was a member of the Saint Louis Ecclesia. As a
pilgrim, from 1909-1914 he visited central and eastern states of the United
States, as well as various provinces of Canada. He was a capable speaker. He
came to work at the Watch Tower headquarters around 1910, where he first worked
on general supervision and then conducted Bible classes and religious services.
In addition to being Russell's secretary, Sturgeon
was also responsible for helping the latter in his medical treatments. He was
the last of the Bible Students to see Russell alive. On Russell’s last tour, he
had to replace him at times in Los Angeles, and was with him when he died on
the train on the return journey to Brooklyn. Sturgeon reported in detail the
last days of his life in the Watch Tower publications.
In the split that followed Rutherford’s election as
president, Sturgeon supported the four dismissed directors, and was put forward
as an alternative choice as president. In the subseqent referendum
comparatively few voted for him.
Sturgeon was to leave both the Watch Tower Society
and the alternative Bible Student groups, to join Fredrik Robison in supporting
the Concordant Publishing Concern. He died on August 17, 1935 and the group’s
magazine published an obituary from which some of the above has been taken.
Extra note:
Others who did
secretarial work for CTR over the years included John Adam Bohnet and Edwin
Brenneisen. CTR’s stenographers over the years included Charles U Ball (the
brother of Rose Ball) and Malcom Cameron Rutherford, the son of Joseph F Rutherford.
The above material was eventually incorporated into a chapter in a book about the Bible House in Allegheny. A review of this book is in the next post.
