Dr. Thomas left Illinois in 1843, intending only to collect an old debt, see friends, and then return. A series of personal misfortunes and intense opposition from some Campbellites caused a change of mind, and after a tour of Virginia he finished up in Louisville, Kentucky where he stayed for about a year. Events during his visit to Virginia, and the subsequent publishing of the Herald of the Future Age, confirmed the virtual separation of Dr. Thomas and his followers from Campbellism. In addition, during that year he had some enforced quiet time, and studied the writings of William Miller, which he approved of in general (although not in the details). It is fair to say that before 1843, almost all his followers had been from the ranks of the Campbellites: after this time, they increasingly came from the Millerites, as we shall see.
We shall therefore:
- Look briefly at the misfortunes that accompanied Dr. Thomas’ trip, and their impact on his future way of life.
- Describe the events during his visit to Virginia, some of which had long-term consequences.
- Look at the background of the Millerites, and their initial impact on Dr. Thomas.
- Discuss briefly some of the events that took place during his stay in Louisville.
Since Robert Roberts in his biography of Dr. Thomas deals at length with events during this time, I will only briefly mention several of them, as they have little bearing on the beliefs of Dr. Thomas or the emergence of “Christadelphians.”
Visit to Virginia, via Cincinnati and Pittsburgh
In early summer 1843, Dr. Thomas left his home in Si Charles, Illinois bound for Cincinnati, Ohio. There he left his wife, Ellen, and daughter Eusebia, who would have been around seven, at the home of his old friend Daniel Gano. I am becoming convinced that Ellen was originally from Cincinnati, and quite possibly related to the Ganos, so this would be quite natural.
From there Dr. Thomas went to Pittsburgh, where another old friend, Walter Scott, resided. We recall he had baptized John Thomas 10 years before in Cincinnati, and had remained aloof from the disputes between Alexander Campbell and Dr. Thomas. The two, Scott and Thomas, obviously were still very friendly, and sustained for many years a fairly good relationship. It was the late 50’s before Dr. Thomas became estranged, writing in 1859 that Scott was “…wild as a theological march hare.”
After a brief stay with Scott, Dr. Thomas made his way over the Appalachian mountains to Fredericksburg, Virginia. He had apparently announced he would be visiting the area, as one of the Campbellite periodicals commented prior to his arrival “he has separated himself from us…He is resolved, it seems to us, to raise a party.”
On Sunday, July 30, 1843, “The Doctor entered the meeting house of the Fredericksburg church, whilst one of the members, (John. G. Parrish) was speaking. At the close of the discourse, he was recognized, and invited to speak for the church in the evening. This announcement was made, and instantly objected to (by Parrish and a portion of the meeting). The result has been a division.” (Quote from Religious Herald).
It should be stressed that Dr. Thomas here started, this first Sunday in Virginia, to gather a nucleus of followers whose descendants have formed the core of Christadelphians in Virginia to this day. Dr. Thomas’ tours the summers of 1843 through 1846 resulted in at least eight Campbellite churches following his lead, with, according to the Campbellite records, several hundred members involved. His believers included two of the most prominent Campbellites in Virginia (Albert Anderson and Allan Magruder), and Dr. Thomas’ influence was considerable. You will search our literature in vain, however, for any hint of this real success: Robert Roberts has a chapter entitled “First travels in the Truth’s Service,” but it relates to visits to New York, Buffalo and Toronto in 1847. We hope to discuss this topic in a later article.
Charlottesville and Allan Magruder
From Fredericksburg, Dr. Thomas went to Richmond, from whence he made lecturing tours of Virginia. There was considerable opposition to his activities, however, especially from one Reuben Coleman, who stated, “A crisis has arrived, and it is impossible for the brethren generally to fraternize with Dr. Thomas, or any who espouse his cause.”
He carried these words into action, as Magruder, a prominent lawyer who had been preaching for the Campbellites for several years, entertained Dr. Thomas when he visited Charlottesville. In a classic case of “guilt by association,” Coleman and others managed to exclude Magruder from the Charlottesville church, over the protests of Magruder who claimed no special knowledge or appreciation of Dr. Thomas’ message. Magruder published a lawyerly account of this “excommunication,” which makes fascinating reading for the passions aroused on both sides.
Magruder soon became a staunch supporter of Dr. Thomas, keeping the flame of the Truth alive in Virginia in his absences. His relationship with the Christadelphians is intriguing, spanning as it does over 30 years before he and Robert Roberts disagreed. The story of the Magruder brothers will be the subject of a different article, God willing, for it was Magruder’s brother, General John Bankhead Magruder (“Prince John”), who helped Dr. Thomas through the lines between the South and the North in the Civil War.
Dr. Thomas stays in Louisville, Kentucky
On the way home to St. Charles, Illinois, Dr. Thomas fell ill in Louisville, and lodged with two elders of the Campbellite church. Presumably his wife and daughter soon joined him, though he returned his wife to the care of his friend Daniel Gano in September, 1844. He decided to stay in Louisville, and sent to his agent in Illinois to sell his farm. Not only was he unable to collect the debt he had come to Virginia to retrieve, he was swindled out of the proceeds of the sale of his farm, and finished up in debt. This appears to have forced Dr. Thomas to accept the hospitality of friends and relatives: it is ten years later before he again had a place of his own, according to his account in the Herald of 1856. (Alan Eyre has identified a house in Richmond as belonging to Dr. Thomas: we hope to discuss this next month.)
When he first arrived in Louisville, he initially had free access to the Campbellite pulpit, being friends with two of the three elders. One of these elders, a Dr. Bodenhamer, appears to have resigned and followed Dr. Thomas. Bodenhamer first wrote to Dr. Thomas as a “stranger” in 1835, according to a letter in the Apostolic Advocate, and later wrote several more letters including at least one in the Herald of the Future Age.
Dr. Thomas, when he first arrived in Louisville, debated a Universalist Minister over a period of a week, and was obviously influencing many members of the Campbellite church. This probably contributed to his decision to remain in Louisville. Opposition strengthened, however, and culminated in the church hiring David Burnett as a minister. (This is information from church histories: Robert Roberts mentions this incident, but has “Barnet” instead of “Burnett.” This was the same individual who had first baptized Dr. Thomas’ wife many years before.)1
The result was that the pulpit was closed to Dr. Thomas, and the public proclamation of his message suspended. Meanwhile, he completed the last two issues of The Investigator, which he had been paid for, but did not continue it a second year.
At the urging of Bodenhamer, a prospectus for a new magazine of a more directly religious nature than The Investigator was issued in March, 1844. Entitled Herald of the Future Age, this was published in four volumes, the last of which took three years to issue and was not completed until 1850, as Dr. Thomas left for England in 1848. (It was completed by a partnership of Dr. Thomas’ followers in Virginia.) This periodical should not be confused with Herald of the Kingdom and the Age to Come, which followed it in 1851 and has been reprinted.
Dr. Thomas and the Millerites
With some free time, Dr. Thomas appeared to have given much additional thought to the study of prophesy. He had already published articles on the Revelation in the Apostolic Advocate, particularly in 1838. As he says, “My lips were sealed in Louisville after the debate with the Universalist Clergyman…(so) I am working on the fifth, sixth, seventh trumpets of the Apocalypse, the rise of the Mohammed Power, the cleansing of the Sanctuary and the book of Daniel.” As part of this effort (or it might have caused it), Dr. Thomas studied the writing of William Miller, who was causing a great deal of excitement at the time with his predictions of the sure return of Christ in 1844. As Dr. Thomas would become increasingly involved with the Millerites over the next decade, and obtained many of his supporters from among their ranks, a little background is appropriate. (Dr. Thomas was very involved a little later with two other Millerites, George Storrs and Joseph Marsh, whose influence has extended down to this day in the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of God of the Abrahamic Faith — but that is another story.)
Dr. Thomas wrote in a letter to the editor of a Millerite newspaper, the Western Midnight Cry, “Though I differ with Mr. Miller in some of his conclusions, I sympathize with him…I believe he is both candid and honest.”
The letter, which disputed the accuracy of Miller’s chronology, was never published.
William Miller was born in 1782 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Without any formal education, Miller became a prosperous farmer in upstate New York. After flirtations with Deists (who hold that God, though He exists, has not and will not interfere with His creation), Miller became a Baptist like his parents around 1814. Using the erroneous principle that any word used figuratively would always symbolize the same idea throughout the Bible, he calculated that the Catholic Church, the fourth beast of Daniel, would be destroyed in 1843 and Christ would then return. He was not alone in this: at least 19 other exegetes had pointed out the same date, but not all agreed on its consequence. Beginning in 1831, Miller began to proclaim the return of Christ, and after a slow start by 1843 he had gathered about 50,000 followers, who were meeting independently. Miller changed his mind on the precise day several times, but his last prediction was for October 22, 1844. The “Great Disappointment” was followed by a confession of errors by Miller and others, one notably being George Storrs, who wrote a renunciation of his ties with William Miller in his Bible Examiner. But a nucleus of Millerites still remained, both in this country and in England, and it was to these groups that Dr. Thomas appealed in 1846-1860.
Dr. Thomas, of course, became himself keenly interested in the topic of prophecy, but commented when he visited the Millerites in upstate New York in 1847, “They have occupied themselves too exclusively upon the moment when. Let them examine more minutely the things which, so that when the time fails them, they may not be taken unawares by the events which must surely come to pass before the Lord comes. This will be soon, but not so soon as they imagine.” (Found in Herald of the Future Age.)
Other happenings in Louisville
The fact that Dr. Thomas was known as part journalist, part religious preacher, and apparently not as a medical doctor is brought out by the fact he was asked to write leading articles for the local paper. He did so, without thought of the consequences, on the evils of the Catholic Church. As far as we can tell, after the inevitable complaints (for elections were underway, and the Jesuits had a college close by), this was the last time he was asked to do so, which would come as no surprise.
We get a clue as to how Dr. Thomas spent his time from a letter in which he replied to a fairly temperate account that one Mr. Fanning, editor of the Campbellite Christian Review, wrote of a visit to Louisville, during which he visited with Dr. Thomas. Thomas said “You are right as to my devotion to the studies of the scriptures. I believe you generally found me so engaged. The things they reveal are my study day and night.”
Dr. Thomas leaves Louisville
After his normal summer tour to preach the gospel in 1844, Dr. Thomas left Louisville on September 25, 1844 destined for Richmond, Virginia, where he and his daughter were to take up residence with Richard Malone. Once more he left his wife with Daniel Gano in Cincinnati, after he had spoken at the Sixth Street Campbellite church there. He had made little long-term impact on Louisville, leaving behind a little group of about eight in number, if Campbellite sources are to be believed. It is clear, however, that he spent a great deal of his time there in study of the Bible, especially regarding prophecy, and this bore much fruit in his later writings. Perhaps even more significantly, several current ecclesias can trace their origin to Dr. Thomas’ involvement with the Millerites, which began during this period.
Note on Sources. Darst’s book “Antebellum Virginia Disciples” deals with Dr. Thomas in Virginia from the Campbellite side, the Herald of the Future Age presents Dr. Thomas’ side. The story of the Millerites can be found, among many other sources, in “Thunder and Trumpets” by David Rowe (which actually includes Dr. Thomas’ comment as above).
- As a sidelight, Burnett was married to Daniel Gano’s sister, Mary, although Dr. Thomas never mentions this relationship. Dr. Thomas associated with many highly placed individuals in civil and religious circles. He does complain, years later, that Burnett was paid $1,000 for three talks per week, while he worked for free. The episode still rankled in 1859.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One