Compared with America, those who search genealogical records in Britain are well blessed. Civil registration in the U.K. made the registration all births, deaths and marriages obligatory from 1837 onwards, and parish registers might take you back several hundred years before that. Not so with a “new” country like America, with its separate legislation for different States. As a result, many well known figures in Watch Tower history are not always in the official records.
One example is Joseph Franklin Rutherford. He was born on November 8, 1869. We only know this because when he applied for a passport in 1920 he had to provide some sort of proof. It was obviously not required before, because he’d had a passport and travelled extensively up the outbreak of the Great War. But now, proof of birth was required. His mother had to sign an affidavit. For those interested in such trivia, below is the document his 77 year old mother, Leonora, duly provided.
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