Merry.....I was just checking again and found a comment in the 1 November 1937 Watchtower (p. 2) that may pose a problem; it describes the new booklet Safety as "containing the two recent public addresses by Brother Rutherford, that delivered at the recent general convention of the Lord’s people in Paris and entitled 'Comfort', and that radiocast from the Coliseum at Columbus, Ohio, on the occasion of the international convention there and entitled 'Safety' ". So does this imply that Rutherford did not personally attend the Ohio Convention? Why would he be absent from the big North American convention? Or does the remark mean that Rutherford did give an address at the Ohio Convention which was radiocasted across the country? Does anyone have access to the 1938 Yearbook or a convention report to tell for sure? Maybe I could check local Ohio newspapers from September 1937.
Of course, if Rutherford was absent, this would not entail that none of the others were not present.
A few odds and ends on the Heaths and Boyds:
(1) The 15 June 1925 Watchtower published a letter by Mrs. Susan T. Heath of Georgia. This was William Pratt Heath, Jr.'s mother, who became a Bible Student in 1915 (according to Athanasius).
(2) The passenger list for the S. S. Breman, sailing from Southampton on 6/25/1938, mentions William Pratt Heath (Sr.) of Roswell, Georgia. It indicates his DOB as 7/17/1876. That’s incidentally the same birthday as Bonnie Boyd Heath (wonder what she thought of having the same birthday as her father-in-law). Earlier in this thread I had found W. P. Heath Sr.’s draft card (submitted on 9/12/1918) which gave his DOB as 7/17/1875….a one-year discrepancy. The Biography and Genealogy Master Index has an entry for William Pratt Heath, Sr. (1875-1950), so I’m not sure which year is correct.
(3) Earnest said earlier in this thread:
Leolaia, the fact that Bonnie and her mother came to Bethel in 1923 (and that Rutherford became a father-figure) suggests that her father was either dead or divorced.
This seems quite possible. John R. Boyd of Black Hawk, Waterloo, Iowa appears in the 1895 Iowa Census and in the 1900 census, but I can't find him or the other Boyds on the 1910 and 1920 censuses. In the 1930 census, Victoria R. Boyd claimed "Wd" as her marital status, so she had been widowed sometime before then, but when is an open question. She was 17 years old at her first marriage, and since she was born in May 1872, that points to May 1889-May 1890 as when she married John R. Boyd. Their oldest child, Glen Boyd, was born in January 1891 (i.e. conceived April 1890).
But this is the real mystery....What prior connection was there between Bonnie and Victoria Boyd and the people in Bethel? If they were invited by William E. Van Amburgh, did they already know the secretary-treasurer? Or his wife Luie? Van Amburgh was chairman of several conventions held in the Midwest in the 1900s and 1910s, such as the 1904 St. Louis Convention and the 1913 convention in Madison, Wisconsin. Or did they know Rutherford (i.e. Iowa is not far from Missouri)? There was also a Benjamin H. Boyd in the 1920s who was a prominant pilgrim, traveling throughout the U.S. in the 1920s to give talks and lectures for the IBSA. Is there a relation between him and Bonnie (i.e. as cousin, uncle, etc.)?
I also wonder about a connection between Victoria Boyd and the Balkos of Texas, since Victoria lived in Texas for a while...at least in the 1940s.
And where did Bonnie and Victoria live prior to 1923?