1879 Herald of the Morning PDF!

by cabasilas 10 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  cabasilas

  This should be of interest to history buffs.

  I've scanned the January to June issues of Herald of the Morning for the year 1879. This is, of course, the journal C.T. Russell was affiliated with before he started the Watch Tower magazine in July of the same year.

  I'll let others discuss particulars. The January issue contains their current understanding of time prophecies and seems to issue stronger statements about what they were expecting for 1881 than I've seen elsewhere. There are a few articles penned by Russell in various issues. The conflict between Russell and Barbour (and Barbour and Paton) continues over from the previous year. Russell asks if any are interested in a companion magazine to the Herald, but in the next issue says there wasn't much support for the idea.

  The May and June issues provide Barbour's side of their separation. (We've only seen Russell's side presented before in WT publications.) Barbour notes that Russell joined with him in November of 1876 and had funded the publishing of Barbour's book (The Three Worlds) and magazine (the Herald). Barbour made Russell an assistant editor along with Paton. But, then they disagreed on the nature of the Atonement. The May and June issues records Barbour's reaction to Russell's offer to buy out the Herald from Barbour and then Barbour's feelings about Russell starting a competing paper using the subscriber list from the Herald. Interesting commentary by Barbour.

  I tried several different settings for the OCR, but it did not come out very well. The file is bookmarked, however. Many thanks to the anonymous donor who passed these on so that they could be scanned!

  The download link for the 1879 issues of Herald of the Morning (about 8.5 MB) is at this filesharing site:

  http://www.filesend.net/download.php?f=c8750916e73c7cf54b5bc74fa2064528

  Those who might want the 1878 issues (just over 7 MB) can get that here:

  http://www.filesend.net/download.php?f=9bbcf2145157a699c4a375d68bb381cd

  The first issue of the Watch Tower contained a supplement written by Russell to the subscribers of the Herald of the Morning. In it, Russell replies to some of what Barbour says in the May and June issue of the Herald. Those that might want to read that can download the WTs from 1879-1916 (70MB)and check that out in the July 1879 issue:

  http://www.filesend.net/download.php?f=8a1d312ac9af051d6547f387fcc80469

  For those who want to read more articles from the Herald of the Morning...Typed copies of issues from 1874 to 1876 are online at:

  http://www.heraldmag.org/olb/contents/history/11%20Herald%20of%20the%20Mornings%20Part1.htm

  The issues from 1874-1876 are pre-Russell. The PDFs from 1878 and 1879 are from when Russell was affiliated with Barbour (except for the May and June issues of 1879).

  It appears there are still issues of the Herald of the Morning missing from later in 1876 to mid-1878. I believe some issues are a serialization of the book The Three Worlds. Also, the Herald was a quarterly for awhile instead of a monthly. Perhaps someday these issues can be made available to reserachers. If anyone has info on those, please send me a PM. Thanks!
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  slimboyfat

  Wow. Have you found anything interesting in it? It is a bit of a strain on the eyes.

  Do you know who owns these copies - they must be worth a fortune.

  Slim
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  cabasilas

  Slim,

  Yes, I do. The source is Anonymous. You can probably tell by the name that he's of Greek extraction. :)

  The print had faded badly and I tried to compensate somewhat by turning up the darkness contrast. It helped only a little. I apologize for the eye strain!
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  Leolaia

  Thanks for copying this too. Neat stuff. I was able to turn up the contrast even more in Photoshop, not sure how much it helps tho.
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  garybuss

  Awesome! Got em! Thanks!
  
  
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  cultswatter

  You might have success using the "levels" in photoshop to make the text darker
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  mavie

  Thank you!
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  cabasilas

  Hey, if someone can make the text darker, see if the OCR can be improved. It would be great to have the search function work fully.
• 

  Leolaia

  It won't help, there is already a lot of missing information in terms of pixels, as you can see in this example with increased contrast:

  

  Plus you need much higher resolution for good OCR. It seems that you scanned it as grayscale or color, whereas it works better with bitonal at higher resolution. Just be sure that you have good contrast in your original....I suspect your xerox original may be subpar in quality which is the root of the problem....
• 

  cabasilas

  Thanks for the explanation, Leolaia. I didn't do the photocopying, but I don't think we can get permission to do it again. At least, they are somewhat readable.

  I know Brooklyn has a few of these on file. When I was there (73-75), there was a box in the old Gilead Library (107 building) that contained several Herald of the Mornings. I remember reading from an issue that was after the break with Russell and Barbour was making some comments about Russell. That was too long ago to remember exactly what was being said, however. My guess is that stuff is no longer out for the average Bethelite to have access to.

  I don't know what we're missing in the 76-78 range, but it'd be interesting to see. Especially, when you consider they were expecting big things for the Spring of 1878. Was there any build-up for that date besides what's in The Three Worlds?