1. Three Weddings (but no funeral this time)

Genealogical researchers in Britain are well and truly spoiled for resources when compared with other countries. Civil registration (where the State took over officially from the Church) was introduced in 1837. Theoretically, all births, marriages and deaths (hatched, matched and dispatched) have been centrally recorded and readily available in Britain since 1837. As for marriages, Hardwick’s marriage act of 1753 laid down a legal framework for marriages in England and Wales (sending some couples scurrying to Scotland) which at least gave standardisation and a better preservation of records.

In such a new and diverse country as the United States, this level of record keeping was not achieved in some places until the start of the 20^th century. This can make research difficult. Once you go back into the 19^th century (and beyond) in America you are generally at the mercy of ecclesiastical records. This presumes that scribes of yesteryear were both literate and conscientious, that damp and mice didn’t then destroy their handiwork, and when the churches in question disappeared that their records didn’t just disappear with them due to incompetence or disinterest. We have the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) and their teaching of vicarious baptism to thank for so many records being scanned and preserved for the benefit of all researchers. But even so, there are so many gaps. Maybe more records will be discovered and scanned. Maybe. But the further back in history you go, if we haven’t already got the material on sites like Family Search and Ancestry, then the chances are that the records – assuming they even properly existed originally – have gone for good.

This preamble is necessary because we are going to look at three marriages involving Charles Taze Russell’s family in the 19^th century. As yet we have no official surviving official records for any of them. So this article presents some detective work using other resources to establish within a few months when each event happened. The methods used may be of assistance in others’ research.

Joseph Lytle (or Lytel) Russell and Ann Eliza Birney

CTR's parents both came from Ireland originally, and the Watchtower Society's history video Faith in Action part 1 (Out of Darkness) suggested that they came over as a couple in 1845. The commentary states "it was in 1845 that Joseph and Ann Eliza Russell emigrated from Ireland to Pennsylvania, USA."

This is likely based on Joseph Lytle’s 1897 obituary which indeed says he came to America “about 1845.” However, obituaries have one built-in problem when it comes to accurate information – the one person who can verify the details is not there to do so. Many years ago in the pre-Internet age I found Joseph L’s naturalization record in the Society of Genealogists’ library in London. It was dated 1848. Obtaining a copy of the original document from the Prothonotary’s office in Pittsburgh, it plainly showed that Joseph swore an oath to the effect that he had been in the country for at least five years. That pushes his immigration back to at least 1843. In the article that follows this, Pittsburgh Presbyterians, we present even more proof that he was living in Pittsburgh in 1843.

You may need to enlarge this graphic to read it properly. It is reproduced here, even though the quality is poor, because microfilmed rolls of naturalization records for Pennsylvania on the Ancestry website omit this document. It is not there with all the other swearings held on 26 October 1848 and neither does it show up in the Ancestry index. But it exists, because here it is.

As for Ann Eliza, the Birney family was in America in the 1840s, although her brother’s obituary in 1899 is somewhat garbled. It suggests that Thomas came to America in 1821, which is actually his birth year. It also states that he joined the 2^nd Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh in 1845. A naturalization record exists for Thomas Birney in Allegheny Co., Penn. dated 8 October 1855, which likely ties in with the baptism of his children from 1857 onwards in 2^nd Presbyterian. Thomas Birney married Mary Ann Covell and they had six children baptised between 1857 and 1872, including one named after Ann Eliza.

The above facts about Joseph L Russell and Ann Eliza Birney would give a wide leeway for a marriage. However, we can fix the date down to just a couple of months due to other records, although some assumptions are made. The Pittsburgh Post carried a regular feature listing the names of people who should visit the post office to collect mail. A E Birney turns up in 1848. In the Pittsburgh Post for Saturday, July 1, 1848, page 2, there is a letter waiting for her.

It is reasonably safe to assume that this is Ann Eliza, single, in Pittsburgh in 1848. Even more conclusive is the entry the following year. The graphic below comes from the Pittsburgh Daily Post for Wednesday, April 4, 1849, page 2. This time we have a Ladies’ List and this time she is Miss A E Birney.

So Ann Eliza is in Pittsburgh and still single in March/April 1849, although this assumes her correspondent wasn’t someone ignorant of a marriage that had already taken place. But taking this at face value, Joseph L and Ann E travelled to America as singles and were not married until after March 1849.

Let’s now approach it from another angle. The 1850 census finds Joseph L and Ann E married with one child, T(homas), who is aged 5/12. Here is the entry below.

Some sources have transcribed Thomas’ age as 3/12 which would have made his birth around March of 1850, but this is an error. If we zoom in on this entry we can see clearly that the key number is a 5.

The rule for the 1850 census was that it should be a snapshot of how people were on June 1 that year. Assuming the enumerator followed this rule, if Thomas was five months old on June 1 then he was born either late December or early January. So he was conceived back in April/May, 1849, which was not long after Miss A E Birney was told to collect her mail from the post office. Maybe it related to an impending wedding.

It should be noted that there is conflicting information in the burial records for Thomas at the Allegheny cemetery. Thomas died on 11 August 1855 and the register says he was 5 years and 3 months when he died. If that were true, he would have been born in May 1850. That would mean that the census enumerator who recorded Joseph and Ann’s circumstances for June 1, 1850, mistook a new baby for a child of five months. That seems most unlikely. Since the burial register pages were copied up after the events any error would appear to be at that end of Thomas’ history – maybe confusing the numbers three and eight with the crabby handwriting of the day, which would take you back again to the January.

There is quite a bit of conjecture in the above calculations, but absent a baptism record it is the best we have.

Ann Eliza’s brother, Thomas, was a member of the 2^nd Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh (according to his obituary as noted above). It would be logical for the newly married Russells to be members there also.  A check of available church records has only one mention of Joseph L Russell – the sessions minutes have him being given a certificate of dismission on December 1, 1849. See the image below.

Deciphering the meaning with the help of the Presbyterian Historical Society shows this is our Joseph Lytle joining the 2nd Presbyterian Church around the time his first child was born in December 1849, having previously been a member of the 3rd Presbyterian Church. But there is no record of his marriage in surviving registers of either church. However, although Thomas Birney was a member of the 2^nd Presbyterian Church and had six children baptised there, the actual marriage of Thomas and Mary Ann is not in the register either. For more details of the Russell family’s religious history see the following article Pittsburgh Presbyterians.

But joining all the dots, Joseph L Russell likely married Ann Eliza Birney in the spring of 1849.

Charles Taze Russell and Maria Frances Ackley

Our second marriage is far easier to establish, in spite of an equal paucity of records. There is no register available with the details of CTR’s marriage to Maria Frances Ackley. However, on this occasion it was mentioned in the newspaper. From the Pittsburgh Daily Post for Saturday, March 15, 1879:

That meant the marriage took place on Thursday, March 13, 1879. The same announcement appeared in the Pittsburgh Gazette for Friday, March 14, 1879, which added the information that the wedding was conducted by Eld. J H Paton of Almont, Michigan.

Joseph Lytle Russell and Emma Hammond Ackley

CTR’s mother died in 1861. His father was to re-marry, and what would complicate family relations later, married CTR’s wife’s sister, Emma. Emma Ackley once she became Emma Russell was both CTR’s sister-in-law and step-mother.

In the late 1890s there was to be family estrangement when CTR advised his father on making his last will and testament, and provision was ultimately made for others, not just Emma. After Joseph’s death, Emma was to support Maria in her legal action against CTR, and the two women spent the rest of their lives together.

Although there are a few missing issues, a careful check of Pittsburgh newspapers did not yield any announcement of this union. And there are no known extant records giving a date. So again we have to narrow events down by other evidence.

The 1880 census was designed to provide a snapshot of events on June 1 that year. Below is the relevant entry for the Russell household, actually dated June 14, and well over a year after CTR and Maria were married.

It is not the clearest of writing but it shows four people living together in Cedar Avenue.

Russel (sic) C.T.          Aged 28                                 

Married           Occupation: merchant

Maria F                        Aged 29          Wife               

Married           Occupation: Keeps house

J L                               Aged 60          Father             

Widowed        Occupation: merchant

Ackley E.H.                Aged 26          Sister (*)         

Single              Occupation: at home

*This is difficult to read. It looks a bit like Sister (step) but the correct relationship to the head of the household, CTR, should be Sister (in law).

Joseph L has shaved a few years off his age. He was approaching 68 at this point, but only admits to 60.

According to this census return, at the beginning of June 1880 Joseph L and Emma are living at the same address but are still not married.  So their marriage would have to be after the date of the census.

Again let us approach it from another angle. Joseph L and Emma had one child named Mabel. Mabel ultimately married Richard Packard and they had three children. They are all found in the 1910 census where Mabel’s age is given as 31. The Family Search page for this census therefore gives her estimated birth year as 1879.

However, census returns are notoriously unreliable for dates. Before that Mabel had already specificied a birth year of 1881. When she married Richard Packard on June 30, 1903, she gave 1881 on the certificate and that is the date on her grave marker. (See Find a Grave and also her obituary in the St Petersburg Times for November 11, 1961).

What is interesting to note though is that her birth date on the marriage certificate is only partial. If you check the graphic below you can see what I mean.

Mabel does not give the day – just a line and then September 1881.

 A search on Ancestry gives the date September 16, 1881.  But on close checking everyone seems to be copying everyone else on this and no-one can provide a primary source for the information. It might just be on her death certificate (from 1962), but even then who is to say this is accurate, given that she appeared not to be sure when alive in 1903?

So personally, I would prefer to stick with the information we know Mabel supplied, “sometime” in September 1881. So let’s do the math again. If born in September 1881, she must have been conceived around December 1880. So we can assume her mother, Emma, was married sometime between the census of June 1880 and November/December 1880. With Joseph and Emma living under the same roof in the snapshot of June 1880, I would suspect that the marriage took place quite soon after that census was taken. As well as not knowing the exact date, we don’t know who conducted the wedding ceremony. John Paton was chosen to conduct CTR’s wedding in March 1879, so who was asked to conduct his father’s a little over a year later?

It would of course have been so much easier for researchers had they all got married in Britain or had just waited until the 20^th century in America.

However, that might have been a bit problematic for Joseph Lytle since he died in 1897…

2. Pittsburgh Presbyterians

Many of those from Scots-Irish stock who immigrated to America belonged to the Presbyterian Church. The Russell family were no exception.

Their family tree can be traced back (so far) to a Thomas Russell who married Fannie Grier (Russell) in Londonderry in what is now Northern Ireland. According to the Aunt Sarah Russell Morris document (see article on Mary Jane Russell on this blog) the Russells had thirteen children, ten of whom survived to adulthood. Most of them came to America. Some settled in New York and New Jersey, but our particular interest is in those who ended up in the Pittsburgh area. Charles Tays, James and Joseph Lytle Russell were three brothers, who all lived and ultimately died in Pittsburgh. They were all buried together in the Allegheny cemetery in a family plot originally purchased by James.

Relying on his obituary for details, one of the first to reach America was Charles Tays Russell in the early 1820s. By 1831 he was in Pittsburgh with a store. We now know that he joined the Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh in 1834.

The Third Presbyterian Church Pittsburgh was established in 1834, and as members joined they were given a number. In the very first year of its operation, Charles T Russell, became a member, and was given the number 47. Here is his entry in the church admissions register.

The entry states he was admitted on January 22, 1834, by certificate, which means he came from another Presbyterian Church with a letter of introduction. We do not know which one that was, or whether it was in Pittsburgh or elsewhere.

The right hand column details what eventually happened to these members. The entry for Chas T Russell shows that he was “suspended.” Had he simply left for another church the entry would have read “dismissed” – which can be a bit confusing for readers unfamiliar with the terms as they were used in the register. Had he misbehaved and been expelled the register would have stated that, and quite likely would have given salacious detail of his offense. However, the entry “suspended” in this context suggests that Charles Tays simply lapsed. He stopped attending, he ceased making contributions, and eventually the church wrote him off. There is no evidence of any subsequent involvement in religious affairs for the rest of his (admittedly) sketchy history. And his obituary does not tell us who conducted his funeral service.

It does confirm the family’s Presbyterian background. Other arrivals from this family would have automatically gravitated towards the Pittsburgh Presbyterians.

We have no church record for his brother James. We know James was in Pittsburgh in 1840 because of the census. He purchased the family plot for ten graves in the Allegheny cemetery in the mid-1840s in Section 7, plot 17. His wife Sarah was the first to be buried there in December1846, and he joined her a year later in December 1847.

Our particular interest is in another of the Russell brothers, Joseph Lytle, because he became father to Charles Taze Russell, named after his uncle but with variant spelling for the middle name. As noted in the previous article, the Watchtower Society’s history video Faith in Action part 1 (Out of Darkness) suggests that he came to America already married in 1845. But this information, likely based on his obituary, is incorrect. As the previous article outlines, Joseph Lytle’s application for citizenship in 1848 stated that he had been in the United States for five years. This can now be confirmed because his name occurs in a Pittsburgh newspaper for 1843.

The Pittsburgh Daily Post began a regular column in 1843 listing the names of all those who needed to collect mail from the Pittsburgh post office. It is a great shame for researchers that the feature did not start in earlier years. In the issue for Monday, October 16, 1843 (repeated in the following two daily issues) we find Joseph L Russell.

 One notes that the name Joseph has an unusual spelling. This is either a misprint in the paper or some creative spelling on the part of whoever sent the letter, perhaps from the old country, Ireland. Whatever the reason, this is probably why this newspaper reference has not been discovered until recently.

Above the name of Joceph (sic) L Russell is James Russell, who was likely his older brother. A month later in the issue for Saturday, November 18, 1843, we find the oldest brother, Charles T Russell, also being asked to collect his mail.

So Joseph L Russell was in Pittsburgh in October 1843. His older brother Charles Tays Russell had been there for more than a decade and had joined the Third Presbyterian Church in January 1834. The next discovery is that Joseph Lytle chose to join the same church in 1845.

Here is the same church register that featured Charles T Russell as member number 47.  We are now up to member number 551, Joseph Russell.

Joseph was admitted to this church on March 7, 1845, by certificate. This means that like Charles Tays before him, he had come from another Presbyterian Church with a letter of introduction, but again we don’t know from which church, whether in Pittsburgh or elsewhere. I cannot quite picture him traveling across the Atlantic clutching a letter of introduction, so he likely belonged to another American Church before joining the 3^rd Presbyterian. We also note in the right hand column that he was ultimately “dismissed” so changed churches again.

As noted in the previous article, Joseph Lytle was to transfer from the Third to the Second Presbyterian on December 1, 1849. Here again is the Second Presbyterian register that provides that information.

To explain the abbreviations ex = examination and cert = certificate. So Joseph L. Russell was admitted to the church on examination and certificate on December 1, 1849. This confirmed that he had been a member of another church in good standing before transferring to the Second Presbyterians.

The event is also mentioned in the Second Presbyterian Session Minutes from December 1, 1849, as reproduced below.

These minutes add the extra information that pulls the story together: Joseph L. Russell was previously a member of the Third Presbyterian Church (New School) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In fact it was this reference that opened the door on the research into the Russell brothers’ religious affiliations, as outlined in the article that follows this.

December 1, 1849, was an interesting time for Joseph L to change churches. It may have been linked to the impending birth of a first child as noted in the previous article, or it may have been a simple geographical relocation within the greater Pittsburgh area. At present we do not know.

What is still missing is any information about Ann Eliza in surviving records of Pittsburgh Presbyterian churches. We have no marriage record for her and Joseph or any baptism record for her children. However, the church Joseph Lytle joined (and we assume Ann with him) was also the church Ann’s brother, Thomas, attended at some point. Thomas Birney’s obituary from 1899 as referenced in the previous article states that he joined the Second Presbyterian Church in 1845. That date cannot be verified because we have no record of this in extant church records. Neither do have any record of his marriage to Mary Ann Covell. However, between 1857 and 1872 six of his children were baptised in that church, including a daughter named after her aunt, Ann Eliza.

Second Presbyterian baptism register. Ann Eliza, daughter of Thomas

and Mary Ann Birney, born October 29, 1856, baptized September 12, 1857.

So in summary, Joseph Lytle Russell and Ann Eliza Birney came to the United States as singles. Joseph was in Pittsburgh as early as 1843 and Ann was there from at least 1848. They met and married in Pittsburgh, likely after meeting through Pittsburgh Presbyterian Church contact. Joseph had previously joined one Presbyterian Church in 1845, the same church his older brother Charles Tays had joined back in 1834. Ann Eliza’s brother was Presbyterian and his children were baptised there in the 1850s.

So at the time that Joseph and Ann started their family, first Thomas and then Charles Taze Russell, they were Presbyterian in faith.

3. Following the Trail

For the benefit of fellow researchers who read this site, how was the above information discovered? Remarkably easily, and basically in the reverse order to the way the material is presented.

Using Ancestry I did a search for Ann Eliza Birney, CTR’s mother. Almost immediately a birth came up in this name from 1855, in the records of the 2^nd Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh. It turned out to be the daughter of Thomas and Mary Ann Birney. Thomas was Joseph Lytle Russell’s brother-in-law. They had simply named one of their children after her aunt. The 2^nd Presbyterian records showed that Thomas and Mary Ann had six children baptised there, although there are no extant records of their marriage. Still, here was definite proof that one branch of the family had been 2^nd Presbyterian.

With a little help from the Presbyterian Historical Society the church sessions records showed Joseph Lytle joined this church in 1849, and crucially that he had transferred from the 3^rd Presbyterian Church. All the surviving records for 3^rd Presbyterian are online, and conveniently past church members had compiled a rough alphabetical list of all members past and present. There were several Russells on the list – some obviously no connection - but two were. There was Joseph, who joined in 1845, and the extra big surprise, the original Charles T(ays) Russell who joined in 1834, the year the church opened. I still visually checked the complete listing of members in date order just in case the compilers had omitted a stray Russell, but they hadn’t.

Records of around 40 different Presbyterian churches in Pittsburgh are now available to online researchers, so the next step was to visually check them all. That wasn’t as difficult as it sounds – many were outside the time frame which narrowed the search considerably. But the only results found for the Russell and Birney families are in the preceeding articles. Of course, it may be that more records will surface in the future to fill missing pieces in the jigsaw.

I have a theory that maybe Ann Eliza was at one time affiliated with a Philadelphian Presbyterian Church. We know that later in her marriage she and Joseph lived in Philadelphia. We know that she had business interests there because after Joseph’s own business failed he ended up as her “agent in Philadelphia” in her will. And near the end of her life Ann and Joseph were mentioned in a Philadelphian church register. The trouble is that while Pittsburgh had around 40 Presbyterian Churches, Philadelphia had far more. If an Ancestry index doesn’t throw up any information, it would take a very long time to search them all. A VERY LONG TIME. Sometimes, life is just too short.

Photodrama of Creation ticket

The dates show this ticket from the U.K. to be for 1915.

A letter from Maria (1894)

 In late 2014 a handwritten letter from Maria Russell was sold on eBay. The collector who purchased the original kindly reproduced the contents for others to see, and it is here transcribed in full.

It was written by Maria quite soon after she had traveled to congregations to defend CTR from accusations made by S D Rogers and others. (see: A Conspiracy Exposed and Harvest Siftings, extra number of ZWT for April 25, 1894, and subsequent correspondence in columns of ZWT). At the time it was written Maria was visiting the home of her sister, Emma, in Ashland, Virginia, along with Emma’s family, her husband Joseph L Russell (CTR’s father) and daugher Mabel.

Start of the letter

 

End of letter

 Transcript of complete letter

Ashland, Va.

July 19^th, 1894.

Mrs W N Fuller

Dear Sister in Christ

     Your welcome letter of June 27^th was duly received and the pamphlet requested was sent you and as I did not have time to reply before I left home I do so now from here where I am spending a short time with my sister for rest and change.

     We appreciate very much the sentiments of your letter and feel very thankful that the storm has passed and that so little damage has been done. God has wonderfully overruled in it all and made the wrath of man to praise him; and all has worked together for good to his saints – the called according to his purpose who still love and serve him. What could more increase our love and confidence in him.

     We do indeed feel sorry for the erring ones, but there is no sign of repentance on the part of any of them. Their only regret is that they have not succeeded in wrecking the work and ruining the reputation and influence of Bro. Russell. How sad and deplorable must be such a condition of mind and heart.

(page 2)

     I am glad to know that your interest in the truth continues to grow and that your faith and hope increases. I hear from you occasionally through Sister Vero. Yes, how precious the truth is to us and what could we take in exchange for it? It is dearer to me every day and all my ambition is to attain that whereunto I am called. I can never for a moment feel that I could be satisfied unless I win the prize of our high calling; and yet I constantly realize my unworthiness. In Christ alone is my hope.

     The good work both h at home and abroad still goes forward, and even though clouds and darkness are about how we blessedly realize that the Lord is present and doing his strange and wonderful work. How fast events are progressing toward the full establishment of his kingdom. Truly Zion hears and is glad and the daughters of Judah rejoice. My heart is full of joy and praise when I think of these things.

     Give our love to your dear mother and family. My sister here – Mrs J.L. Russell – also sends greeting to you in the Lord. She and her husband and little daughter are also in the same faith and hope. She and I came into the truth together. Hoping to hear from you again, I am as ever

              Yours in the Beloved

               Mrs. C. T. Russell.

Fringe Items

A sample of the kind of advertisements that started appearing in the St Paul Enterprise newspaper in 1917. If any survived they would be highly collectable today.

I rather like the "Four pages, over 2,000 yards..."

Find a Grave

This article has grown out of several articles published in the past elsewhere. Its main purpose is to show photographs of headstones for people connected with Watch Tower history in some way, using the Find a Grave website. That site should be credited for the photographs, although I have also received permission from the original photographers to reproduce their work. So grateful thanks goes to Sherry, Doug, Shiver, MrsJB, JennO, Duane, blt, Neil, Chris, Mojo, Joann, Kathie and Beverley. In some cases the pictures used here are alternatives to those currently found on the site, simply because I didn’t need permission to use my own photographs.

Contacting those who originally took the photographs has had follow-on benefits. I have made contact on occasion with descendants of these people, some with tales to tell. On one occasion a long standing mystery was solved when the photographer kindly went back to the cemetery and took an additional photograph. This was the case of Malcom Rutherford (Judge Rutherford’s son) and his two marriages. The story is told in the series of articles on Malcom elsewhere on this blog.

Because permission has been granted for reproduction it means that readers can probably assume it is OK to copy on these pictures for non-commercial use if anyone so chooses. However, I would always recommend going back to the original source on Find a Grave as some pages contain further information on the individuals. And this is not static – new material is being added all the time to this resource. What wasn’t there for me to discover today could just be there for you to discover tomorrow. Also, I have only listed the headstones and names of individals and not the actual cemeteries in this article, but this information can easily be found on the Find a Grave site.

It is worth noting that there are some individuals connected with Watch Tower history who do not have headstones, but nonetheless have pages devoted to them on the Find a Grave site. However, in this article, apart from some paragraphs on the Staten Island Cemetery where no markers was a matter of policy, these are not covered. This article is, after all, about pictures. But I still recommend that you type in your name of choice and check. And things change. For example, when I first wrote this article there was no photograph of John Corbin Sunderlin’s headstone. Now there is. I say again - always check.

Before we actually get to the pictures, perhaps I can illustrate the spin-off value of this resource with one example. In researching Henry Weber for an article recently published here, a letter was found in ZWT from 1901 written by an Edna Mary Hammond. Edna stated that her introduction to Bible Student publications was through her brother’s Sunday school teacher. This was Henry Weber. Edna is very specific; she was 10 years old at the time. Find a Grave finds – not just Henry Weber, but also Edna Mary. We know from her entry that she was born in 1873 and also where she was born. Do the math and we know that Henry was already circulating CTR’s publications as early as 1883. We also know from Edna’s entry and the surrounding family entries that her sister died as a Jehovah’s Witness. So we have the right name, the right family, the right place and right religious connections. All of this gives us an earlier date than previously known for Henry Weber’s Watch Tower connections.

The Russell family

 Charles Taze Russell

Front row - markers for CTR's father, mother, and three siblings

Back row - markers for Uncle Charles, Uncle James and Aunt Sarah

 Father - Joseph L Russell

 The in-laws, Mahlon and Selena Ackley

 The wife - Maria Frances Russell

The sister in law and step-mother, Emma Russell

Before the Watch Tower

 Henry Grew

(no grave location known, but this is his death certificate)

 Benjamin Wilson

 Jonas Wendell

 George Stetson

 George Storrs

Nelson Barbour

Some of those who went their own way

 William H Conley (first Society president)

 "Our Pet" - Conley's adopted daughter who died aged 10 in 1881

 John H Paton

 Hugh B Rice

 Arthur P Adams

 Otto Von Zech

Ernest C Henninges

(his wife Rose Ball was buried here too but the headstone was never updated)

Post-CTR

Nathan H Knorr and Frederick W Franz

Later years

The Society had its own cemetery, the Rosemont United Cemeteries, in Ross Township, Pittsburgh. Here CTR and a few Bethel family members and Pilgrims were buried, and their names inscribed on a pyramid monument that is still a tourist attraction today. The actual cemetery was sold off in 1917 with only a couple of small areas still reserved for Watch Tower adherents. However, shortly after the headquarters moved from Pittsburgh back to Brooklyn for the second time in 1919, the plan was to all intents and purposes abandoned. There was one burial in 1925, another in 1934 (CTR's sister), and then not until the 1940s were the remaining graves sold off. This cemetery will be the subject of future articles.

It made far more sense to have a cemetery for Bethel workers in New York where they were now headquartered. So a new cemetery was created on Staten Island, New York. In 1922 the Society bought 24 acres of land in Woodrow Road, Staten Island. The area is sometimes known as Rossville and also Huguenot Park. The purpose was to build their own radio station WBBR which started broadcasting in early 1924. There was also some farming done on the land, in what was then very much a rural area.

A new graveyard was established nearby in the same street, alongside an historic landmark, the Woodrow United Methodist Church. The website NYC AM Radio History when discussing station WBBR made the statement:

Judge Rutherford died in 1942 and was buried at Rossville in a Methodist cemetery within sight of the WBBR towers.

This small burial plot was used until at least the late 1960s. There are various references to this cemetery in the Society’s literature when the death of someone well-known from their headquarters staff was announced. For example, the Awake for February 22, 1952 page 26 recounts the funeral of Clayton J Woodworth, along with two other Bethel workers in a triple interment. The article reads (in part):

On Staten Island in New York City the Watchtower Society maintains a place of burial for members of the headquarters staff known as the Bethel family. How appropriate it is that the remains of these men who labored together during their lifetime, Rutherford, Van Amburgh, Martin and Woodworth, should be buried there together!

These four had all been imprisoned together way back in 1918.

The Woodrow Road graveyard was accessible to the general public. It was obviously the policy to have no grave markers. It is reported that today you can recognise the area belonging to the Society simply because it is the only section in the cemetery without headstones or markers.

In the 1960s the Society purchased two properties at Wallkill, Ulster County, about 100 miles north of Brooklyn, NY, totalling a reported 1200 hectares (around 3000 acres). These became known as Watchtower Farms, and extensive printing operations were transferred to this area from the early 1970s onwards. A new graveyard was created on this property that is known as the Watchtower Farms Cemetery. It is a private cemetery on private land and is therefore not accessible to the general public. The custom is now to have small grave markers put down as depicted above for Nathan Knorr and Frederick Franz.

Only a few of those buried at Wallkill have photographs on Find a Grave. However, you can still check names. At the time of writing the site lists 175 graves.  But be warned that the list is not complete, and neither is it error free. For example, it lists the grave of A H MacMillan as being at Wallkill, whereas the Watchtower for 1966, page 608, clearly shows that he was buried at Staten Island. The same would be true of Giovanni DeCecca who died in 1965. These two, also imprisoned together back in 1918, were probably among the last to be interred at Woodrow Road.

In conclusion, it is acknowledged that this article does not directly add much to our knowledge of Watch Tower history, but is designed to highlight a resource that the author has found extremely useful. The more who use it, the more it will grow, and the more useful it can be for future researchers.