Rutherford Exposed: The Story of Berta and Bonnie

by Farkel 747 Replies latest watchtower scandals

• 

  Mythbuster

  Not sure if this fits into anything being discussed here but this is the only reference to JRs wife in his trial transcript for sedition:

  page 1099 PDF
  
  Q. When you were in town, the Bethel Home, was it your practice to preside over the meals there?
  A. Always; yes sir.
  Q. And did you live in the Bethel Home, Mr. Rutherford?
  A. Yes sir.
  Q. Did you live at the Bethel Home yourself?
  A. Yes sir.
  Q. Does your wife live there?
  A. Only part of the time, on account of her health she is required to stay in California most of the time.
• 

  Black Sheep

  According to WHO'S WHO IN MUSIC IN CALIFORNIA published in 1920, 128 N. Eastlake Ave., Los Angeles, Cal. was the home of Raymond Harmon.
• 

  Leolaia

  Very nice finds!

  Mythbuster....I hadn't noticed that reference to Mary in the 1918 trial transcript. So it looks like she was having health and mobility issues as early as 1918.

  Black Sheep....Yup the 1920 census shows that Raymond Harmon lives at the same address as Mary Rutherford:

  

  I am not sure but it looks like the census taker used ½ notation to indicate sublets. So at 128 N. Eastlake Avenue lived Mary Rutherford and William P. Jones (age 78) both as their own respective "Heads" of the family. William's family included his widowed daughter Maria Harmon (age 55) and her four grown-up kids and a son-in-law. Raymond Harmon, music teacher, was one of Maria's sons. As his Who's Who entry states: "Began his vocal study with Holmes Cowper, at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, in 1912. Studied in Chicago with Lucille Stevenson and Charles W. Clark, at Bush Temple Conservatory. Later he studied with Louise Grandjean and Sig. Trabadello, in Paris. Has held excellent church positions in Des Moines and Chicago, and appeared in light opera in various parts of the U. S. In concert and oratorio [he] has appeared in the U. S., England, and France" (p. 74). Here is the entry for Malcolm's address:

  

  And here is Malcolm's 1917 draft card, which gives 128 ½ N. Eastlake Avenue as his address. This is the same address that Mary has in the 1920 census.

  
• 

  Lady Lee

  wow Just when you think there is nothing else to find!

  What gaps still exist? Are there things you are still looking for Leolaia?

  Perhaps putting those questions down in a list some others might be able to help with the research.
• 

  Lady Lee

  aligot

  Historians of the WTS will be grateful to you for having unearthed facts unknown to the public or which the Society simply hadn't kept record of.

  Well it won't be the WTS that is happy to have all this tawdry history revealed

  leolaia

  I think it is just what women did back then. No woman admitted her age. It was an insult to even ask a woman her age. I could be wrong about thios but I seem to recall it was a habit for female movie stars to lie about their age and have false documents to prove it.

  We know too that Rutherfird had no problem lying to the authorities when it suited his purposes. So I can see him very easily going along with lies about the age of the woemn in his life. For the time the older the man and the younger the woman the more virile he appeared to be. Not that that has changed a lot for some men. But it is no longer shameful to be a woman of a certain age. We;ve got Betty White and Flkorence Henderson who are quite proud of their accomplisments at their age.

  Found this over on Wikipedia

  Age fabrication was once common in the entertainment industry. For example, until the early 1950s in Hollywood it was extremely common for actresses to subtract at least one year from their actual age so that producers and casting directors would be more likely to hire them for roles.

  Actors

  • Gracie Allen, comedian, was notorious for keeping her true age concealed and even her husband George Burns did not know her exact age. Various sources claim she was born on July 26 in 1894, 1895, 1897, 1902 or 1906. Her exact age could not be retrieved by a birth certificate, as it was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Allen herself gave her year of birth as 1906, despite the fact the earthquake occurred three months before her birthday that year. When the 1900 United States Census became public information, the true year was revealed as 1895, which meant she was actually a few months older than her husband. [citation needed]
  • Sandra Bullock's birthdate was erroneously given as July 26 in 1965, 1966, and 1967 for most of her early career. In 1997 Vanity Fair discovered that the correct year was 1964. [ 6 ]
  • Irene Cara's exact age was a mystery for most of her career, with various sources claiming that she was born on March 18 in either 1964 or 1959. In 2004 the Associated Press retrieved a copy of her voter registration records from Florida, which verified that she was actually born in 1959. Cara vehemently claimed that she was born in 1964, but refused to comment on the voter registration records. [ 7 ]
  • Charo is sometimes accused of trimming 10 years from her age. In 1977, a Las Vegas court sided upheld Charo's claims and ruled she was born in 1951. The ruling held that the 1941 date on her original Spanish birth certificate is incorrect. However, some still doubt the historical accuracy of a 1951 birthday. Skeptics point to her 1966 marriage and some media reports as evidence that she was born before 1951. [ 8 ]
  • Al Lewis, actor from The Munsters, is reported by various sources to have been born on April 30 in either 1910 or 1923. Shortly after Lewis' death, his son claimed that he was actually born in 1923. [ 9 ] This contradicts Lewis' own statement that he was born in 1910. [ 10 ] Lewis claimed to have graduated from high school in 1927 and to have earned a Ph.D from Columbia University in 1941, [ 11 ] but research by Dan Barry of the New York Times failed to reveal evidence of either. [ 12 ] In April 2006, Lewis' listing on the Social Security Death Index gave his date of birth as April 30, 1923. [ 13 ]
  • Amanda Redman gave her date of birth as August 12, 1959 for many years, and gave interviews in 2009 about her dread of turning 50. A newspaper revealed she was actually about to turn 52, having been born 1957 not 1959. [ 15 ]
  • Toni Tennille, half of the husband-and-wife duo Captain & Tennille, born May 8, 1940, was encouraged by her record label to shave five years off her age because the label was concerned that a 35-year-old starting a recording career would be seen as unusual. She compromised by using 1943 as her birth year, which has appeared in numerous sources. Tennille herself corrected the error in a 2006 entry on her blog, in which she also confirmed that she had married her musical partner Daryl Dragon on November 11, 1975 instead of February 14 in the same year. [ 4 ]

  Those are just a few examples. The further back you go the more lying about age you will find. And the more false documents you will find I think
• 

  Leolaia

  Yeah I'm still looking for Bonnie in the 1920 census. So far she is nowhere to be found. Locating her would possibly help answer the question of where Bonnie lived at the time when Mr. Van Amburgh discovered her.

  Also I am very interested in finding a transcript of the mandamus public hearing before San Diego Superior Judge Arthur L. Mundo on 2/17/1942. It was there in her court testimony that Bonnie declared herself to be Rutherford's adopted daughter and 16 years old at the time she became continuously associated with him (a claim contradicted by her testimony in the Moyle case). The problem is that I don't know even where to look for info on this hearing in the Superior Court archives, and it is very likely that materials from this hearing were purged long ago. Also it was in the second hearing in April when William Heath Jr. denied that Beth Shan was built as a bomb shelter.

  I don't have an international subscription at Ancestry.com, but access to British ship passenger records would provide more evidence of Bonnie's age representation. And most importantly, I would love to find a copy of Bonnie's passport application. She is curiously absent in the mass of online application files spanning from 1795 to 1925, even though Bonnie had already obtained a passport in 1924. That might indicated that the record was pulled and modified at a later date, but I don't know. Bonnie's original passport from 1924 would have given her DOB as 7/17/1896, as the records of the S. S. Paris and two subsequent voyages attest. It wasn't until 1927 when her DOB began to creep upward.

  Furthermore there is more research to be done on the hairpin story. I had a potential source on this but I haven't followed up on it. But I will have to check to see if there are any more details about the story.

  There's lots of more stuff to research too. I think there may be more info about Heath out there. And who knows what else.
• 

  Lady Lee

  I tried registering with Ancestry.com the other day and got nowhere with the website and tried calling and gave up after an hour on the phone on hold.
• 

  aligot ripounsous

  This in-depth and detailed work concerning Rutherford is really impressive and is evidence of the investigative qualities of such great sleuths as Leolaia and other keen researchers but, as a layman I wonder, isn't it according this pathetic charlatan more importance than he deserves ?

  Lady Lee, Sorry for not having been able to put it more accurately, I just meant historians, not from the WTS but writing about the WTS .
• 

  Lady Lee

  I think it is exposing him as a charlatan and that is a good thing. The WTS still holds him as special in giving them the name.

  Personally I wouldn't want anything to do with a man like this. It is no wonder that the WTS wants JWs to think the past doesn't matter. The problem is that if you don't remember and deal with your past it is going to come back and bite you in the a$$.
• 

  dgp

  Marked