by Farkel 747 Replies latest watchtower scandals
Kenneson....Yes, that is the street address of Beth Sarim. The post in this thread that covered who lived at that address was this one:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/11/77915/1271811/post.ashx#1271811
On the subject of Rutherford's death, I also just found this interesting newspaper article:
Leolaia,
The suit Rutherford is wearing, as well his hat, as shown in that photo agree with what he is wearing in photos taken of him at the 1941 St. Louis, Missouri Assembly (Aug 6-10).
--VM44
BTW, Knorr would have been 30 years old in 1941.
--VM44
Okay everybody! I think this one is big. In the original post to this thread by Farkel, we read:
Berta met Bonnie Boyd sometime in the early 1930's. This was confirmed by her niece, "larc's" mother. It was also confirmed in the Olin Moyle trial transcript on pages 1299-1301. At the time, Berta was a full time pioneer and a member of the "anointed." During this time she traveled to Europe with Bonnie Boyd to attend a European convention of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Well, I may well have found empirical proof of this....I was just searching ship passenger logs and came across the following list of the passengers of the S. S. Normandie sailing from Le Havre, France on August 25, 1937:
Here we have Bonnie Boyd, Berta Peale, and William Heath all travelling together with Joseph Rutherford on the same vessel, returning from a trip to Europe. Note ESPECIALLY that this was before 1938 when Berta divorced her husband and moved to Bethel. Here she is still married and still residing in Cuyagen Falls, Ohio. This is also before Bonnie Boyd and William Heath got married. Unfortunately, this list from the S. S. Normandie does not specify cabin numbers, so we cannot tell who roomed with whom.
But here is the most disconcerting thing: Now we have SPECIFIC info on Bonnie Boyd's background, and she says that she was born on July 17, 1904 in Waterloo, Iowa. This is contrary to the information given in the 1930 census, wherein she gave her age as 31 years old. That pointed to 1899 or so as her year of birth. This age is stated on BOTH entries for her in the 1930 census, the one taken at Beth Sarim and the other one taken at Bethel. Here is the one at Bethel:
So what in the world is going on here? Is Bonnie lying about her age in one of these? Note also the comment that Farkel made in his original post: "Yet Boyd came to Bethel as a GIRL in the Fall of 1923 with her mother and Rutherford died in 1942, nineteen years later. A few weeks after Rutherford's death, the San Diego Union on February 18, 1942 quoted her as saying she was the "adopted daughter" of Judge Rutherford, and had been with him continuously since she was 16." This had always bothered me....if Bonnie Boyd was born around 1899 as she said she was, then she would have been 16 years old in 1915....long before she supposedly went to Bethel in 1923. But if she were instead born in 1904, then she would have turned 16 in 1920...a date much closer to Farkel's 1923. Now it is interesting that earlier on, in 1930, Bonnie claimed to be older than she claimed to be in 1937. Could this mean that when she first went to Bethel and for some time afterward, Bonnie concealed her young age and claimed to have been older than she really was? And then later, when she was travelling internationally and had to use her federal passport, she was more honest about her actual age?
Well, I have to say that Bonnie's duplicity has been rather frustrating for me trying to track down more details about her history, but perhaps it has revealed something about her that we have not already known. Now that we know she possibly was born as much as five years later than she had claimed, this means I have to go back to the drawing board to figure out who her family was. At least now I know her birthday and the town she was born in.
Great work Leolaia!
Does anyone know if there are any surviving members of the Russell or Rutherford families?
There are several who have posted here with direct knowledge and family connections to several of Rutherfords illegitimate children.
cheers, unclebruce
Excuse me Leolaia, I feel like I'm barging in here, do we know the place of Rutherfords burial?
unc.
Great Work Leolaia,
Has Bonnie's and William's marriage certificate been found? That would provide additional details her age, or at least what she claimed to be her age.
--VM44
unclebruce.....It is not known for certain where Rutherford is buried. There are rumors (presumably representing what Fred Franz said privately) that Rutherford was secretly buried at Beth Sarim, violating the court's denial. The 27 May 1942 issue of Consolation noted that Rutherford's second wish was to be buried at Beth Shan, so maybe those rumors pertain to burial at that lesser-known estate. On the other hand, Hayden Covington claimed that William and Bonnie Heath took the body back to New York by train and Rutherford was buried in Staten Island (at Woodrow United Methodist Church and Cemetary, 1075 Woodrow Road, where W. E. Van Amburgh and Luie T. Van Amburgh are interred as well).
I'm surprised some of the big heavies on this thread have not yet posted on the new stuff....
VM44....Yeah, what I got was the same thing Earnest received from Clark County....just a little piece of paper saying a wedding took place, with no details whatsoever on the persons involved. Apparently you need to get a marriage license copy, not the certificate, but you cannot get that online....
BTW, I'm pretty certain I know Bonnie's actual age, and I will post that when this thread turns over to a new page (since it is already graphics heavy as it is). Let's just say I've found lots of further evidence of Bonnie concealing her true age. But I want to draw everyone's attention to one detail from the ship logs: that Bonnie claimed to hail from Waterloo, Iowa. On the last page of this thread, I did identify a family in Black Hawk, Waterloo, Iowa that was probably Bonnie's family, for we know from the 1930 census of Bethel that Bonnie's mom was named "Victoria R. Boyd" and that family in Waterloo had a "Victoria Boyd" as parent. The new information from the ship logs confirms that this is indeed Bonnie's family; it just suggests that "Jean Boyd" was not really Bonnie (i.e. Bonnie Jean Boyd as I had thought), but was probably an older sister of Bonnie.
Also, I misspoke when I said that Berta divorced her husband in 1938....actually he divorced her a year or so later, what I meant was that she seperated from her husband in that year....
"Apparently you need to get a marriage license copy, not the certificate, but you cannot get that online"
interesting, perhaps a license copy could be obtained thought a snail mail request.
--VM44
