This is where Mary Rutherford lived.

VM44

This is the address where Mary Rutherford lived up to 1962, the year she died.

What I want to know is who paid for this upscale residence?

Did she? or was it her son Malcolm? or did the Watchtower?

Someone had some significant money to purchase this house, even 50 years ago it would have cost more than the usual home.

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/159-Stedman-Pl-Monrovia-CA-91016/21584575_zpid/

159 Stedman Pl Monrovia CA 91016
3 beds, 3.0 baths, 3,251 sq ft

Close Zestimate: $984,000
Monthly Payment: $ 4,768

159 Stedman Pl., Monrovia, CA 91016

Single family
3 beds
3.0 bath
3,251 sqft
Lot 15,840 sqft
Built in 1935

Black Sheep

I am sure it wasn't a problem for Da Judge to find the money for the house.

It would be nice to see the paper trail though.

Cheers

Chris

VM44

The house was built in 1935.

This might prove to be important information.

It would be interesting to know who was the first owner/resident. This can be checked when the 1940 Census Records become available.

I would be very much surprised if Judge Rutherford ever made a visit here.

VM44

I am going to make a statement that I cannot prove at the moment.

I believe that Rutherford's son Malcolm held onto the Stedman property, or had his name associated with it in some manner, up to the time he died in 1989.

The reason I say this is that a public records search engine I have used in the past still showed the Stedman address when doing a search on Malcolm's name. However, recently such a search does not return the Stedman address!

As the seach records go back about 20 to 25 years, this would indicated that Malcolm was associated with the property up to at least a few years before his death.

betterdaze

VM44, a census will only show who resided at that address for a brief period, it will not show property transfer history or who built/paid for the house.

All deeds, mortgages and liens should be on record at the Los Angeles county clerk's office. It's easy to trace the title with the info you already have.

Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk
12400 East Imperial Highway, Norwalk, CA 90640
Phone: (562) 462-2125, 800-815-2666

[email protected]

~Sue

VM44

Thank you betterdaze for the Los Angeles Public Records information.

Here is one more piece of information.

Malcolm C. Rutherford's last address was: 1148 PALOMA DR ARCADIA CA 91007

What will all this information and research show? I am not sure right now, but perhaps something useful will come from it.

If only there was a decent biography written of Judge Rutherford. But nothing like that has ever been published. People just didn't want to talk about the man when he was living and still didn'te even after he died.

Leolaia

Do we know when she moved there? Up till at least 1930, she lived at 160 N. Primrose Avenue. I suspect that she and Joseph moved there in the early 1920s so Joseph could go to the nearby Pottenger Sanatorium (less than a mile away), where pulmonary diseases were treated. Rutherford's lungs were badly damaged during his time in prison. I suppose that when he seperated from his wife, he had no use for the Sanatorium as well.

tenyearsafter

VM, I don't know if you are from California, but for information, Arcadia is the city next to Monrovia...just minutes away.

Farkel

leolaia,

:Rutherford's lungs were badly damaged during his time in prison.

This information comes from WT literature and was mainly used to justify JFR's stays in San Diego.

But it begs the question: just HOW can one's lungs be "badly damaged" in prison over a period of about 9 months? How come the other 6 WT defendents didn't suffer lung damage, too? Just what was there about JFR AND prison that could cause such "bad" lung damage and cause it ONLY to him?

We know about Dr. Nickols and we know that Rutherford had health problems, but I'm even wondering if his "lung problems" weren't a farce and if they weren't we due to some other condition than whatever-it-was-that prison did to them. By attributing JFRs lung problems to prison the WTS could kill two birds with one stone: justify Beth Sarim and get dubs to feel sorry for JFR at the same time and hate the Government for making him "suffer" so much in prison. (Just speculating here.)

Bad lung damage = justification for Beth Sarim and San Diego. No bad lung damage = no justification for Beth Sarim or San Diego. I'm wondering about this...

Farkel

Leolaia

I like your skepticism....that's good. BTW, I just rechecked some of the WT sources and it seems that I incorrectly said that he contracted pneumonia while in prison....at least the 1975 Yearbook (p. 194) and the Proclaimers book (p. 76) claim that he caught it in 1919 after his release. I think we can rule out the idea that the "lung problems" were concocted to justify Beth Sarim, as Rutherford himself referred to his bout with pneumonia just a year later in 1920:

*** g20 6/23 p. 607 Comment on the Foregoing By J. F. Rutherford ***
THE article by Dr. [J. W.] Coolidge concerning the application of radium as a vital force is interesting to me. About a year ago I suffered from a severe case of pleuro-pneumonia, and Dr. Coolidge was my physician. During the period of convalescence he provided me with a radio-solar pad, or belt, which I wore with great profit to myself. I have since recommended it to others, who have likewise benefited by it.

In light of these comments, I am inclined to think that Rutherford's bout with pneumonia is more probably historical than not -- although it is possible that its seriousness was exaggerated (who knows). BTW, John Wesley Coolidge was a homœopathist from Scranton, Pennsylvania who in 1920 lived in Los Angeles, CA, where Mary and Malcolm Rutherford lived at the time. That Mary then moved away from her son (they lived at 128 and 124 N. Eastlake Avenue, respectively) to Monrovia less than a mile away from the Pottenger Sanatorium (where lung diseases were treated) also fits very well with Rutherford having experienced a lung disease.

This is where Mary Rutherford lived.

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