This material was originally published as
an article on a related blog which resulted in much correspondence and new
material being supplied. As a result, this
is now a revision to incorporate all the information in one place as a
permanent reference. (This explanatory note will be deleted in due course).
The circumstances
surrounding the death of Charles Taze Russell in 1916 have attracted much
comment over the years. The fairly recent discovery of a document from an
undertaker in Waynoka, Oklahoma, prompted this research, which makes use of various
accounts in the Watch Tower magazine
and newspapers like the St Paul Enterprise
to explain what actually happened at that time and why. Serious criticisms
of how matters were handled were made later, and we will examine these. The whole
story is obviously a very sad one for those holding CTR in high esteem, but
ultimately is quite straightforward.
CTR had been seriously
ill when undertaking a series of visits to congregations in the far West and
South West of America in the second half of October 1916. As his health
deteriorated, he, along with traveling companion Menta Sturgeon, tried to get
home to New York by train. He died on that return journey near Pampa, Texas,
around 2 o’clock in the afternoon of Tuesday, October 31.
As CTR’s traveling
companion, Menta Sturgeon tried to deal with the final stages of his illness
and the immediate aftermath of the death, but then found he could not travel on
the railroads out of State without the body being embalmed. Sturgeon was to be
later criticised for not just keeping quiet about the death until the train had
traveled further on, and we will come to that in due course. Sturgeon wanted to
reach Kansas City, but once the authorities knew of the death, had no
alternative but to stop at the first place on route that could handle matters.
That was Waynoka, a city in Woods County, Oklahoma, population in 1910 of 1160
people. Here a death certificate was obtained. And here, as the advertisement below
shows, Josiah Bushy Kepner was the only choice you had.
From the Woods County Enterprise, April 2, 1915.
Kepner was the only
person in Waynoka who was licensed to perform the task. We note from his
advertisement that he was involved in several other ventures under the one
roof. In the Enterprise for 14
November 1916, a Mrs Norah Voyles Keith wrote that “there in the back of a
furniture store was all that remained of our beloved Pastor.” This was very
common. Undertakers only had full-time work in the larger cities. Otherwise, many involved in furniture
production simply branched out into making coffins. The only extra skill an
undertaker needed to learn was embalming. Kepner perhaps had a head start
because back in the 1880s he had also been involved in pharmaceuticals. From
the Nemaha County Replican for 9 October 9 1884:
Josiah Bushy Kepner
(1852-1944) had been in the undertaking business for nearly thirty years by the
time he attended CTR, first in Sabetha,
Kansas, and then in Waynoka, Oklahoma. He had been mayor twice in Sabetha, and
was well respected in Waynoka, where he was to serve as president of a local
bank.
His work was well
spoken of in the St Paul Enterprise.
From the Enterprise for 21 November 1916:
Kepner finally retired in 1929, but his second wife kept on the business at
least until the 1940s. The advertisement below is from 1943.
It was eventually taken
over by the Marshall Funeral Home (now in nearby Alva, Oklahoma) and it is from
their inherited records that the copy of his bill to Menta Sturgeon was
retrieved.
There are three
charges. $5.00 for washing and dressing the body – the washing with
disinfectant was normally done twice, both before and after the embalming
process. Then there was $20 for the actual embalming, although Kepner doesn’t
specify on the bill what fluid was used, and then $35 for the coffin for
transportation on the railways.
The process for
embalming that Kepner would have used really came into its own during the
American Civil War. Those who could afford it wanted their loved ones who died
on the battlefield to be returned to them for a family funeral with – if
possible – an open coffin or casket. The procedure was not just to preserve the
body but to make the person appear as loved ones would want to remember. There
was a ghoulish trade of embalmers following armies around offering soldiers
about to go into combat a pre-paid plan. At one point these outfits were banned
because of the bad effect on morale. When the railways objected to unembalmed
bodies being transported for health reasons, it became common practice. Finally
there were laws in each State stipulating that the procedure was necessary if
the body had to be transported over a certain distance or out of State. The
custom really took off after Abraham Lincoln was embalmed. His body went on
tour and over a million people saw him lying in state over a 20 day period
before his funeral in 1865. Thirty six years later in 1901 his coffin was
opened and the body was immediately recognisable. If this was good enough for
Abraham Lincoln then it was good enough for the general population.
The actual procedure
involved using the circulatory system, discovered by William Harvey, to replace
blood with a preservative solution. Originally this was arsenic based, but that
wan’t too good for the living. By
Kepner’s day it was generally formaldehyde, and this is still the case today.
The procedure took between 2 and 4 hours. CTR’s body was taken off the train
around 7 pm on the Tuesday evening, and returned to the train at 3 am the
following Wednesday morning.
So this is the
background as to why Menta Sturgeon could not just take CTR’s body back to New
York. Once the death was made public, Sturgeon was forced to stop at the first
place the embalming service could be provided.
Criticisms of these
events received a public airing in 1923, when W H Wisdom published his book The Laodicean Messenger aka Memoirs of Pastor Russell.
The book was reviewed -
critically – in the Watch Tower for 15
September 1923.
On page 242 Wisdom made the criticism that “through
some more bungling the body was removed from the train at the first small town,
where it was very improperly cared for in the way of embalming.”
He then
indicated that further embalming work was done in Kansas City en route and
finally again on arrival at New York.
From where did Wisdom get his information?
There are two probable sources from that era.
The first, and least compelling, is a letter found in
the New Era Enterprise newspaper.
This was the newspaper used by Bible Students at the time for news and views
and much found in it cannot be found elsewhere.
In the 27 December 1921 Enterprise,
Joseph Greig while visiting Texas, including Pampa (where CTR actually died on
the train), wrote a short column “Pastor Russell’s Death Route.” Recounting the
story he said: "Orders were given to remove the body at Wynoka, Okla.,
where an old gentleman cared for the embalming. One who knew this person said
while he was not expert in his profession by reason of poor eyesight,
nevertheless, he was possibly the only embalmer who never extracted the blood,
but used his fluid in connection with the blood as a preservative."
There are several problems with Greig’s account. “Old
gentleman” has to be subjective – Kepner was younger than CTR. Then the concept
of embalming by just introducing embalming fluid without replacing cadaver
blood does not make sense. The whole point of embalming was to replace the
blood to preserve the body temporarily
and give a lifelike appearance for viewers. The procedure was quite
straightforward for anyone with the basic training and equipment – with or
without good eyesight. Embalming fluid was pumped into the body, generally through
the carotid artery, and was able to displace the blood through an incision in a
vein (often the jugular). It used the human circulatory system to work.
Sometimes massage was applied to help the embalming fluid to circulate fully.
As we have seen, the procedure was refined and popularized during the American
Civil war when a body needed preservation for transportation or a delayed
funeral.
This account came from someone touring Texas, who never
visited Waynoka in the next State and never met Kepner, even though he was
still very much in business in Waynoka at the time. It was written several
years after the event. It falls into the category of “an unnamed person told
me…”
Of greater weight is a talk given by A H MacMillan
called The History of the Society from
1910-1920. The talk was transcribed,
as was a short question and answer session after it, and some of the material –
almost word for word – was to later appear in MacMillan’s book Faith on the March (1957). The actual transcript shows this particular version
of the talk was given as late as c. 1951 because it also mentions Jesse Hemery leaving
fellowship with the IBSA. However, it reflects MacMillan’s view of events and
of course he was there in Brooklyn Bethel at the time.
Taken from this transcript:
MacMillan was scathing about Menta Sturgeon. Quote:
“Poor Sturgeon didn’t know enough to take care of a sick chicken, much less a
dying man. What he said himself about Brother Russell was enough to kill the
man if he was half alive.”
Reading Sturgeon’s detailed description of CTR’s
last hours and his attempts to care for him; and in the heightened emotion of
the moment “spiritualizing” some of those events, one can understand
MacMillan’s comments.
MacMillan also blamed Sturgeon for the body having
to be removed from the train at Waynoka, where Kepner Undertaking was the only
game in town. Sturgeon had chosen to publicize the death and Railway and State
regulations kicked in. As MacMillan states “if he had any sense and kept his
mouth shut” the situation could be been avoided.
There also appear to be other issues at the time. In
his talk MacMillan was to further criticise Sturgeon for not giving the Bethel
family the news. Sturgeon wrote to his wife, Florence, in Bethel, and told her.
Only by intercepting the letter did MacMillan and others learn the news, before
the newspaper reporters started banging on the doors.
MacMillan could be caustic about Sturgeon because he
had died way back in 1935, and long before then had ceased fellowship with the
IBSA. He ultimately left all strands of the Bible Student movement and ended up
canvassing for a Universalist group, The Concordant Bible Society.
MacMillan’s distain for Kepner came across in his
continued description: “They pulled the body off the train in Pampa, Texas, and
took him to a furniture store.” (Being pedantic, CTR died on the train at Pampa,
Texas, but the furniture store was in Waynoka, Oklahoma, which was about 150
miles further along the track). However, as already recognized, it was quite
normal in smaller settlements for the undertaker to have several businesses.
With only a little over a thousand inhabitants, Waynoka was not going to have
that many funerals in any given period, even with an extended catchment area.
Then there is the most serious criticism - in MacMillan’s estimation, Kepner was
not qualified. His account continues: “There a man who didn’t know how to
embalm tried to embalm the body and made a mess of the whole thing.”
Did Kepner know how to embalm? We have established
he was licensed and was the only licensed embalmer in the city. When he moved to
Waynoka in 1913 and took over new premises The
Woods County Enterprise (Waynoka) for 18 April 18 1913, stated he had been
in business for 30 years and praised him
as a graduate of the best schools of embalming in the U.S.
Even allowing for self publicity, embalming was
something Kepner did. He remained in active practice for over a decade after
attending to CTR, only retiring in 1929. His company, managed by his second
wife likely hired someone else to do the embalming, and was still advertising in
the 1940s. While embalmers may bury their mistakes (literally!) this man ran a
successful business for decades. There was no hint of any issues in the many
references to him in the newspapers of the day.
So what was the problem? We must remember that his
brief was not to present a body for lying in state, rather simply to preserve
it to meet existing laws for transportation. Kepner appears to have done what
was required. Again, as noted above, contemporary accounts of the events
surrounding CTR’s death spoke highly of him and there was no criticism from
those who first saw the body before it continued on its journey.
MacMillan is then critical of finding suitcases
packed around CTR’s feet in a twenty dollar casket. But this was not a casket
for viewing; it was a simple coffin (actually costing thirty five dollars) to
meet the requirements of transporting a body across America. Possessions that
had been taken off the train with the body also had to be forwarded, personal
effects, clothes etc. and the logical thing was to store them in the coffin if
there was room. This may have been Kepner (and Sturgeon) just being practical,
but MacMillan seems to have taken it as insensitive and disrespectful. It is
interesting to note that MacMillan blames Kepner rather than any undertaker in
Kansas City, where, if further work was needed, the body would have been
removed from the coffin. So MacMillan either didn’t know or had forgotten this.
Or – Wisdom in his Memoirs of Pastor
Russell got the details wrong. And it is perfectly possible that Sturgeon,
having intended to have the body treated in Kansas City, wired ahead to set
wheels in motion, before being forced by the authorities to leave the train
earlier at Waynoka.
So
in the end what was the real issue? Everyone was very upset. Their beloved
Pastor Russell had died. He looked old before his time, had been failing in
health for quite a while, and sadly died in great pain. Opening the coffin and
seeing him was very distressing for all concerned. There was turmoil in Bethel
at the time. After giving the Bethel family the news, MacMillan described how
“they met in little groups to talk and whisper, "What is going to happen
now?"” Once the glue that held them together – Pastor Russell in person –
was gone, there were going to be problems, as events later proved.
So there was an inclination to lash out. Sturgeon
came under fire and Kepner came under fire. That CTR’s remains would need
further attention after leaving Waynoka is not disputed. The coffin was loaded on and off trains and bumped
about in motor vehicles and in and out of various buildings – the Bethel home,
the New York City Temple, Carnegie Hall in Pittsburgh, etc. – and his remains
were also re-dressed and transferred to a more substantial casket In New York
for the funeral services. Whether the
embalming had to be reinforced or not, it was no doubt necessary to make what
the November 21, 1916 St Paul Enterprise
simply called “such little touches as the long trip would call for.” These
cosmetic adjustments meant that each time CTR lay in state, the mourners could
see him as they remembered him, as best as was possible in the circumstances.
The open casket was seen first in the Bethel Home
and then in the New York City Temple. Finally, there was another long railway
journey back from New York to Pittsburgh where he lay in state for the final
part of the funeral services. So nearly a week after he passed away, mourners
saw him for the last time, on Monday, November 6, at Carnegie Hall in
Pittsburgh. There exists a photograph taken of the platform and the Carnegie
Hall audience on the day that is reproduced below.
You will notice a blur across the photograph in
front of the platform. This was actually a queue of mourners filing past the
open casket, which the long exposure can only show as a smudge across the
picture.
After this final service in Pittsburgh the body was
taken for burial at dusk on the 6th at the Society’s own plot in
United Cemeteries. The casket would be interred inside its packing case and the
whole encased in concrete.
