A key photograph in the history of the Watch Tower Society is that for the 1893 Chicago convention, the first real national convention the Bible Students held. Most readers here will be familiar with the picture below that was published in the 1914 Chicago City Temple brochure. It shows around 76 of the 360 delegates in a group photograph. You may need to click on it to see the picture in full.
It would be nice to have the clearest photograph
possible to try and identify the different Bible Students who appeared in the
picture.
Does anyone out there have a better copy that could
be shared? To illustrate, below is a selective enlargement from the bottom
right hand corner of the photograph. Again you may need to click on it to see
it in full. However, I think most would agree that the definition is far
better.
The story behind the above is that when I was in
America as an international delegate in 2014 I visited a home that had a large
card-backed photograph of this scene. Using a cheap camera I took a quick snapshot
of just this small section. The “original” from which the snap was taken is now
apparently buried under glass in an Assembly Hall display. My reason for just
taking a selective extract was that all I wanted at the time was a good
photograph of a young Ernest Henninges and his wife to be, Rose Ball. They are sitting
together on the ground in the front on the right. As a bonus, in this selective
enlargement you can see in the “middle row” towards the left of the picture, CTR sitting
with his wife Maria. Their inclusion was accidental, but this adds another
picture to the Russell family history.
It was only when back home, several thousand miles
away, that I realised what a missed opportunity this had been.
So again, does anyone have a nice clear photograph that can improve on the complete group photograph as shown in this post?
Addendum
The photo below has come to hand, which is cropped, but does show all the individuals in the original picture in better definition to that found in the Our Temple brochure. It is reproduced here for any who want to download it. Of course, if any have a better copy please do say.
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