Rutherford Exposed: The Story of Berta and Bonnie

by Farkel 747 Replies latest watchtower scandals

• 

  Leolaia

  Wow, I just found something fascinating. So I have been trying to figure out what Bonnie was up to between 1910 and 1923 (when she arrived to Bethel with her mother Victoria P. Boyd). Those years are a complete blank, and Bonnie thus far has not been located in the 1920 census. We know nothing about how she came to be acquainted with William E. Van Amburgh and where she lived at the time she was invited to join the Bethel family, much less where she received her education and training in stenography (we do know that her sister Nora was trained in stenography around 1900).

  Some things however are known about that period. In 1910, Bonnie lived with her parents in St. Paul, Ramsey, Minnesota. Ten years later Victoria was widowed and living in Houston, Harris, Texas, as the 1920 census shows. Blanch Harbolt (future caretaker of Beth Sarim) moreover lived only a few blocks away and so both would have gone to the same Bible Student congregation. Bonnie's sister Jean also was living in Houston in 1920. So sometime between 1910 and 1920, Bonnie's father had died and her mother moved to Texas. We know it was probably some time before this because her brother John Glen Boyd was living in Temple, Bell, Texas on 6/6/1917, as stated in his WWI Draft Card. He also indicated that he was living with his mother Victoria. But what about Bonnie? I think I've found a reference to her three years earlier:

  Temple, Tex. Dec. 6. -- Owing to the fact that his personal attention is being claimed by a lawsuit in progress in Liberty, involving the title to some East Texas lands, in which he has an interest, Governor elect Ferguson will not be able to return to his home in this city before the middle of the present week, probably Wednesday at the earliest. In the meantime a political moratorium is in effect at his offices and no announcements of appointments will be made until his return.

  Despite this fact the trail continues to be kept warm by many who are not aware of the governor's absence. The "nothing doing" sign is hung out, however, and most of the number have had their trouble for their pains.

  The new secretary of state, John G. McKay, has confided to friends that he has been too busily occupied thus far to attend to the leasing of an Austin residence, but will remedy this defect soon, as he anticipates moving to Austin soon after the first of new year. Miss Bonnie Boyd, who has been private stenographer to Mr. McKay ever since he assumed management of Mr. Ferguson's campaign for governor, will accompany him to Austin to fill the same position there in Mr. McKay's office (The Galveston Daily News, 12/7/1914, p. 3)

  This has to be our Bonnie! Here she is in the same city where her mother and brother were living three years later, working in the same profession she would have when she started working for Mr. Van Amburgh. And so she got her start working for the Secretary of State of the State of Texas — that's a stunner! But note how old she would have been. Assuming that she was born on 7/17/1896, this meant that she was only 18 years old when this article was written. This shows that the other birthdates she gave could not possibly have been correct. The most common one was 7/17/1904, which appears in the SSDI and thus likely appeared on Bonnie Heath's death certificate. Bonnie could hardly have been private stenographer of the Texas Secretary of State at age 10!
• 

  Leolaia

  Another Bonnie sighting.

  The State Board of Medical Examiners met at 9 o'clock Tuesday morning at the Gunter Hotel to conduct the regular semi-annual examination of medical college graduates who wish to practice in Texas. The examinations were held in the ballroom under the supervision of a committee, and more than one hundred graduates are taking the examinations, among them being men from Spain, Brazil and Mexico....
  
  Dr. Scothern of Dallas is president of this board, in the absence of Secretary J. H. McCelvey of Temple. Miss Bonnie Boyd of Temple is acting in his stead. (San Antonio Light, 6/27/1916, p. 2)

  So we have Bonnie in Temple in 1914, Bonnie in Temple in 1916, and then Bonnie's mother and brother in Temple in 1917.

  So this definitively proves that Bonnie was not born in 1904, as I've suspected for years, and that her originally claimed DOB of 1896 (found also in the 1900 and 1910 censuses) is the correct one. Bonnie had a pretty great start for her career: working first for the Texas Secretary of State, then later for the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners, and then later for the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society. Her life story is starting to come together.
• 

  TheOldHippie

  So she was not 16 in 1923 as farkel wrote, but 29?
• 

  james_woods

  james woods....That is certainly a possibility. Or the terms of the informal separation were worked out privately. If Mary did have things to say, Rutherford still had a publishing empire at his disposal, and he did not hestitate in castigating and libelling his enemies (as the courts affirmed in the case of Olin Moyle). Rutherford himself demonized Maria Russell in his 1915 Battle in the Ecclesiastical Heavens (comparing her to John Wesley's wife as betraying her husband and persecuting him, accusing her of slander, etc.). That itself may have been a disincentive against talking publically about her husband if indeed there was anything to talk about.

  Very true - I was merely speculating, but the facts seem to be that she never uttered a word, even after Rutherford's death. You would think that she would not be in fear of his possible slanders after he died. That made me suspect that perhaps the society was buying her silence - especially since she seems to have pretty much lived at that California address for many years, with no report as to her source of income.

  Certainly, there is ample evidence here that the Society went to great lengths to cover up a lot of dirt on old Rutherford.

  Your research is also starting to make me think that Miss Bonnie was quite the scheming opportunist - popping up here and there in the lives of prominent people to her own advantage.
• 

  Leolaia

  So she was not 16 in 1923 as farkel wrote, but 29?

  TheOldHippie.....Correct, except she was 27 in that year. Farkel was going on the information Bonnie provided that was published in the San Diego Union (2/18/1942). I have shown that not only did she misrepresent her age on that occasion, but that there were many other occasions where she made herself younger than she actually was, particularly to government authorities. In 1923, she was 27, not a sweet sixteen. It was in 1912 when she was 16 years old. That could well have been when her father died. But we know from testimony in the Olin Moyle case that she didn't come to Bethel until 11 years later, at Mr. Van Ambugh's invitation, whom she worked for initially at Bethel — not Rutherford. She did not go to Bethel in 1912, nor is there any evidence that she had any contact with Rutherford, much less that she was "an adopted daughter of Judge Rutherford, and has been with him continuously since she was 16". In fact, this cannot be true. In 1915, Rutherford was living in California with his wife and son. Bonnie was legally an adult (age 19, and in Texas one is considered an adult at 17) and gainfully employed as a stenographer in Temple, Texas. Bonnie was not an orphan, she lived with her mother, and when she came to Bethel in 1923, her mother came with her. There is not a shred of evidence that Rutherford had a legal parental relationship with her.

  I suspect she claimed this in order to declare to the court that she had family privileges when it came to the burial of Rutherford's remains. But this may well have been a "cover story" for quite a while prior to Rutherford's death. It would explain why Bonnie lied about her age, even in government-issued identification, to make herself much younger than she really was. Such a story would defuse the impression of impropriety.....whatever closeness and affection they had for each other would be construed publically as normal for a father-daughter relationship; in her Olin Moyle testimony, Bonnie referred to Rutherford as "Pappy". There is also a precedent in what Rutherford wrote about Rose Ball and Charles Russell. There was also a question of impropriety in that relationship; indeed Maria Russell outright alleged that her husband was inapprorpiate towards Ms. Ball. So Rutherford, writing in Russell's defense (and taking Russell's cue in his own published statements), stated in Battle in the Ecclesiastical Heavens (1915) that Rose Ball was an orphaned child of ten at the time she was taken into the household and was raised by the Russells as their own daughter. In reality, Rose Ball was 19 years old at the time she started living with the Russells, her parents were very much alive, and she was 24 years old when the alleged impropriety took place. So it is curious that the exact same thing (age misrepresentation and claiming to be the president's adopted daughter) happened when a question of sexual impropriety arose concerning the prior president of the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society — and it is especially noteworthy that Rutherford himself was the one who made the dishonest claim about the Russell-Ball relationship.

  I was merely speculating, but the facts seem to be that she never uttered a word, even after Rutherford's death. You would think that she would not be in fear of his possible slanders after he died.

  james_woods....Good point, although the Society outlived Rutherford as well, and if Mary was dependent on local JWs for her needs (it is unclear what relationship she had locally with Bible Students or JWs, and how close Malcolm lived to her in the 1940s), making herself considered part of the "evil slave" class would not have been in her best interest.

  Your research is also starting to make me think that Miss Bonnie was quite the scheming opportunist - popping up here and there in the lives of prominent people to her own advantage.

  More power to her....Things were tough for women in the 1920s, only enfranchised with voting rights in 1920 (!). To see what Bonnie was up against, check out this steaming pile of misogyny from the Golden Age:

  *** g27 12/28 p. 207 Shall I Send Her to Business College ***

  Woman's place in the business world is much like her place in the home. Broadly speaking, she is the shock absorber. When an excited employer rushes her in the preparation of sales letters and specifications, her unruffled disposition and calm fingers on the keys must guard against mistakes. She should have confidence in the ability of the men who must necessarily take the offensive in the fight for an existence. A woman's desk in an office can be, and often is, a haven of refuse and help for discouraged salesmen....

  All this would seem to show that a woman's place in business is a strictly feminine one. If she affects masculinity she defeats herself at the start. If an employer wants masculinity, there is still plenty of legitimate masculinity to be had. If a woman is to be valuable in business she must possess the qualities that make for true womanhood; viz., cleanliness, orderliness, economy, gentleness, courtesy, kindness, cheerfulness, honesty, intelligence. Why should a woman try to imitate a man when there is so much he does easily that she never can do at all and when she can do so much that it would appal a man only to consider?
• 

  St George of England

  *** jv chap. 7 p. 89 Advertise the King and the Kingdom! (1919-1941) ***

  Brother Rutherford was survived by his wife, Mary, and their son, Malcolm. Because Sister Rutherford had poor health and found the winters in New York (where the Watch Tower Society’s headquarters were located) difficult to endure, she and Malcolm had been residing in southern California, where the climate was better for her health. Sister Rutherford died December 17, 1962, at the age of 93. Notice of her death, appearing in the Monrovia, California, Daily News-Post, stated: “Until poor health confined her to her home, she took an active part in the ministerial work of Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

  Mary Rutherford lived on for almost 21 years after JFR's death. Surely the WTS looked after her financially during all these years.

  George
• 

  Momma-Tossed-Me

  Marked
• 

  Leolaia

  I'm not sure if these photos of Bonnie Boyd were posted in this thread yet, but here they are....

  

  Bethel dining room, 1928. Bonnie Boyd, Robert J. Martin (?), Rutherford (left to right). Luie Van Amburgh in the foreground. Martin died in 1932.

  

  Seventh floor secretarial workroom, 1928. Bonnie Boyd and Donald Haslett.

  

  At Beth Sarim, 1931. Donald Haslett, Rutherford, and Bonnie Boyd.

  Also here is the photo of Princess Bonnie Balko:

  
• 

  Farkel

  To all,

  I suspect this thread has evolved into a sentient life form!

  Seriously, the most appealing part of my original post was not Bonnie, but Berta. Bonnie's story was used as a bit of empirical evidence to validate Berta's story, which in my opinion is the blockbuster that exposes Rutherford as a charlatan, a fraud, a shameless adulterer and a hypocrite who used GOD as his prop to live like a King, act like a King and shakedown the lives and fortunes of those poor souls who believed his bullshit. Shoot. Even HE didn't believe his own bullshit.

  Leolaia: I know you've sorta done this, but I think all your fabulous research needs to be re-crystalized down into short bullet-points with the sole purpose of verifying all my assertions and accusations in the topic I started in this thread. I humbly suggest this needs to be done with taking each and every one of my claims/assertions one-by-one as a bullet point and then branding them as "verified/proven" or "not verified/not proven". You could then maybe take an excerpt from your vast research that is on this thread and cite that short excerpt which you have "verified/proven" or a short excerpt where you could not verify or prove my claims. Of course, you could also cite other contributors in this thread and their research, too.

  I'm only asking you to do this, because you are so good at it, and suggest that if you do it, you create an entirely new thread for that summary. There is not one reader in 10,000 that will read this entire thread. I haven't even read all the stuff in here and I started this thread!

  Farkel, Leolaia Fan CLASS
• 

  stillajwexelder

  the blockbuster that exposes Rutherford as a charlatan, a fraud, a shameless adulterer and a hypocrite who used GOD as his prop to live like a King, act like a King and shakedown the lives and fortunes of those poor souls who believed his bullshit. Shoot. Even HE didn't believe his own bullshit.

  Bullet point 1 IMHO