DiggingforTruth

Then addressing particularly the leaders of the General Conference, she pointed out the damaging impact on a rapidly growing church of restrictive policies imposed by a very small group of men struggling to manage a work that had grown far beyond their ability to handle. "You have no right to manage," she declared, "unless you manage in God's order." She then cried out:  {1BIO 15.5}

The speaker hastened to say:  According to the light that has been given me -- and just how it is to be accomplished I cannot say--greater strength must be brought into the managing force of the conference. . . . There must be a renovation, a reorganization; a power and strength must be brought into the committees that are necessary.  {1BIO 16.2}

In her closing remarks Ellen White asked the question "Who do you suppose has been among us since this conference began? . . . Who has walked up and down the aisles of this tabernacle?" She answered, "The God of heaven and His angels," and added:  {1BIO 17.1}

We have been trying to organize the work on right lines. The Lord has sent His angels to minister unto us who are heirs of salvation, telling us how to carry the work forward. . . . Press together, press together. Let us be united in Christ.  {1BIO 17.2}

                                               Here the Story Begins

"By the request of dear friends," wrote Ellen White just fifty years earlier as she traced the opening lines of her first little book in 1851, "I have consented to give a brief sketch of my experience and views, with the hope that it will cheer and strengthen the humble, trusting children of the Lord." The "brief sketch" did that. But her active life was to extend over another sixty-four years. Now it is with difficulty that the story is confined to six large volumes.  {1BIO 17.4}

The village of Gorham is situated some twelve miles west of the city of Portland in rolling country. If tradition can be trusted, the Harmon family lived in a little one-and-a-half-story cottage on Fort Hill, two miles north of the village. The home stood until 1971, when it was destroyed by fire. It was in this home, in a second-floor bedroom, that twins, Ellen Gould and Elizabeth M. Harmon, were born. Robert Harmon worked the land and possibly, during the bitterly cold winter months, engaged in making hats part-time to supplement the rather meager returns from agricultural pursuits.  {1BIO 17.6}

When Ellen and Elizabeth were born, their oldest sister, Caroline, was 15, Harriet was 13, and John was 11 years old. Mary was 6, and then there was Sarah --with whom Ellen would have the closest relationship--who was 5. Robert was nearly 2 years old when the twins were born.  {1BIO 18.3}

Harbingers of the Advent Awakening
Just two weeks before Ellen's sixth birthday the local Portland Advertiser reported:  {1BIO 19.2}

We are told by the early risers . . . that the sky yesterday morning [Nov. 13], before sunrise, was full of meteors and luminous traces, shooting athwart the heavens in all directions. The sky, some say, seemed to be on fire--others add that the stars appeared to be falling. -- November 15, 1833.  {1BIO 19.3}

But in nearby Gorham little Ellen slept soundly through the night when the stars fell. She knew nothing yet of William Miller and his message, and in November, 1833, she was probably just starting to attend school. It is logical to assume that like any healthy youngster she must have used the carefree moments of her childhood to learn more about the things around her. {1BIO 19.5}

Carefree Childhood Days  
With her brothers and sisters Ellen made little journeys into the woods. In later years she told her children of how on one fall day they went in search of hickory nuts, gathered and hidden by the squirrels.  {1BIO 20.1}

Ellen, always compassionate, took with her a little cloth bag of corn. When she found a cache of nuts in a hole in a hollow tree, she eagerly retrieved her find and then substituted the corn she had brought, hoping that the exchange would not be too disappointing to the provident squirrels.  {1BIO 20.2}

In 1901 she wrote of the character-building discipline that had a mold on her life:  {1BIO 21.1}

In the days that she attended the school on Brackett Street, two or three students often sat together at one long desk. The girl sitting beside Ellen one day did something that provoked the teacher. In a rage he threw a ruler at the head of the offending pupil. His aim was poor and the ruler hit Ellen instead, gashing her forehead. Here is how she told about it years later at the Harbor Springs teachers' convention:  {1BIO 21.4}

Said I, "Certainly I will; but where is the mistake?"  {1BIO 21.6}
"I did not mean to hit you."  {1BIO 21.7}
"But," said I, "it is a mistake that you should hit anybody. I would just as soon have this gash in my forehead as to have another injured."-- MS 8a, 1891.  {1BIO 21.8}

The Family Moves to the City of Portland    While the Harmon family enjoyed the rural location of their Gorham home, Robert found his work as a hatter more prosperous than his farming, and the family moved sometime between 1831 and 1833 to the city of Portland, where he could give his full time to his trade. They first lived in a house on Spruce Street on the growing western edge of the city. Later they moved a few blocks down the hill to 44 Clark Street, for according to the city records it was there that Robert Harmon the Hatter lived in 1844.  {1BIO 22.2}

The Portland the Youthful Ellen Harmon Knew     Portland, Maine, from its infancy was an important seaport. At no time was this more true than during Ellen's childhood. The poet Longfellow was born in a home at the edge of Casco Bay, and had grown up there just twenty years earlier. He left a rich source of poetic descriptions of Portland life. "I remember," Longfellow wrote, "the black wharves and the slips, and the sea-tides tossing free; and Spanish sailors with bearded lips, and the beauty and mystery of the ships."--"My Lost Youth," Complete Poetical Works, p. 194.  {1BIO 22.5}

The city directory of 1834 lists the professions of the men of the city and shows that it had 256 laborers, 220 mariners, 209 dealers in West Indian goods, 145 carpenters, and 131 ship captains. All of these jobs were related to the sea, for Portland was not only a seaport but also a shipbuilding center of considerable importance.  {1BIO 23.5}

Hatmaking in the Harmon House     The animal pelts he bought would soon begin their transformation into fur top hats. First he would lay the pelt on a table and with a stout brush rub in a solution of mercuric nitrate. This highly poisonous solution was necessary to make the infinitesimal barbs on each strand of fur become more pronounced. Then with either large shears or a scraping knife he would remove the fur from the skin and place it in a stack. After the hair had been laboriously picked out of the fur, the most difficult part of the process began. A device resembling a violin bow but five or six times as big was brought down over the table. Snapping the catgut on the pile of fur on the bench separated, scattered, and gradually deposited the particles in a smaller and finer sheet. Each sheet represented one hat. With further manipulation, the fibers hooked themselves together into what ultimately became the fur fabric of the hat. The rest of the process is difficult to describe, but Ellen eventually learned the simplest part of it, which was shaping the crown of the hat.  {1BIO 24.3}

Attending Brackett Street School    
It was probably in the autumn of 1833 that Ellen started school, just before her sixth birthday. It could have been earlier, for at that time children could be in school at 5 or even a bit younger. The school was conducted in a frame building on Brackett Street, some four or five short blocks from the Harmon home. In 1836 the wooden building was replaced by a two-story brick structure, and it was doubtless in this building that Ellen spent her last full year in school. School was conducted during both summer and winter in Portland, and once the grind began it was merciless on small children. But Ellen loved it, and she had great ambitions in obtaining a good education and making something of herself.  {1BIO 25.3}

"Why," said the lady, "I knew you by your voice. I attended school on Brackett Street in Portland, and you used to come and read our lessons to us. We could understand them better when you read them than when anyone else did."--DF 733c.  {1BIO 25.7}

The Textbooks She Read   
Instead of Dick and Jane, the reader Ellen Harmon used had none other than a little girl named Ellen as a heroine. The sketches that illustrate the primer show Ellen wearing a long, straight, light-colored skirt. The hem had a little ruffle that came just to the top of her shoes. The blouse had a broad collar and short, puffed sleeves and was fastened down the front with hooks and eyes. Other pictures of the primer depict long-sleeved dresses for older girls and sometimes a hat with a gracefully upturned broad brim and a low, round top. One lesson about Ellen is titled "A Good Girl."  {1BIO 26.1}

No pains were spared to indoctrinate the youngsters with the virtues of hard work and obedience. In other lessons Christian theology was forthrightly taught, and every scholar who could read was required to have a Testament of his own from which several verses were read each day at the opening and close of school.  {1BIO 26.2}

Robert Harmon's Trip to Georgia    
In 1837, when Ellen was 9, America was struck with depression, and the hat business was severely affected. Robert Harmon found that the stock of hats made during the long winter months of 1836-1837 moved very slowly, so he decided to take his supply to Georgia in hope of a more ready sale. There was doubtless an air of excitement in the family the night before he was to leave, and they helped wrap the hats and place them in a large leather bag. We can imagine the whole family following the father to the stage depot early the next morning, first along the dirt paths near their home, and then on the wooden sidewalks down to the old "Elm House" on the corner of Federal and Temple streets, to catch the western stage for Portsmouth, Boston, and points south.  {1BIO 26.4}