Fanny Bolton

Had Ellen White been prescient, she would never have employed Fannie Bolton or Marian Davis as her editors. Nor would she have written the letters to Fannie and Marian that appeared in "The Fannie Bolton Story: A Collection of Source Documents" released by the Ellen G. White Estate in 1982. But she did not know the end from the beginning; and as a result, the struggle over the dark secret they shared was to belong irrevocably to the annals of the Seventh-day Adventist church.
 

The barrage of words hurled from typewriter to typewriter, as can be read in that collection, barely gives a clue that much of the drama took place in the harsh and beautiful continent of Australia - land of the outback, the billabongs, the coolabah trees, and the koalas. The names of Cooranbong, Melbourne, and Adelaide, dropped occasionally in the letters, are only incidental to the conflict between the antagonists in the story.
 

The Story, a quasi biography of Frances Eugenia Bolton, cites her birthday as August 1, 1859. Her death certificate indicates that her birthplace was Chicago, Illinois. (1) Her father was a Methodist minister, and she had at least two brothers. Her picture on the title page of The Story shows an attractive brunette with the small, chiseled features that might please a cosmetologist.
 

Fannie was a June 18, 1883, graduate of the Preparatory School (high school) of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois; and she delivered one of the commencement orations, "The Flight of the Gods." (2) The Story indicates that she attended "Lady's Seminary" and/or "Evanston College." Whether she went beyond the preparatory school at that time has not yet been substantiated. What is known is that after her schooling she found work as a correspondent with the [Chicago] Daily Inter-Ocean, one of the predecessors of the Chicago Tribune.
 

She was converted to Seventh-day Adventism in 1885 by George B. Starr, a minister at the Chicago Mission. Fannie first met Ellen Gould White, Seventh-day Adventism's messenger, at the Springfield, Illinois, campmeeting in 1887 when she was reporting for the paper. She was then twenty-eight years old. Because of her background it was natural that she be asked to edit Ellen's sermons. According to Fannie's account to a friend, Ellen was pleased with the way she made the sermons over for the press, and she wished to employ her. (3)
 

Ellen had recently returned from Europe filled with ideas for writing books and articles. The Great Controversy was finished. The Desire of Ages was a dream, and the Adventist periodicals were constantly clamoring for articles. Marian Davis had been working for Ellen since 1879 and editing for her since the death of James White, her husband, in 1881. But with the numbers of requests for articles, tracts, books, and letters, Marian was staggering under the load. Ellen had to have more help, and Fannie was a likely candidate.
 

William C. White, Ellen's son, and Dores E. Robinson, her grandson-in-law, recalled many years later that Fannie "was recommended to her as a young woman of rare talents, of good education, and an earnest Christian." The arrangement for employment was beneficial for both Ellen and Fannie, they wrote, and Fannie "proved to be brilliant and entertaining, and, although somewhat erratic at times, was loved by the other members of the family." (4)
 

When Ellen left the campmeeting circuit to return to her home in California, she arranged for Fannie to meet her and her party at the Chicago depot so that they could travel together. Ellen was "not with her party, so Elder Starr hunted around till he found her behind a screen in the restaurant very gratified in eating big white raw oysters with vinegar, pepper and salt," Fannie wrote; and on the same trip Willie White brought into the car a "thick piece of bloody beefsteak" for Sara McEnterfer, one of Ellen's valued employees, to cook on a small oil stove. These incidents were shocking to Fannie, who had "lived up to the testimonies with all faithfulness discarding meat, butter, fish, fowl and the supper meal, believing that as the 'Testimonies' say, 'no meat-eater will be translated.'" (5)
 

When the party arrived in California, Fannie was given specific instructions regarding her assignment. She was told at the outset that she was to work under the direction of Marian in preparing letters, or "testimonies," as they were usually referred to, and in editing articles for publication. She was told also, according to White and Robinson, that the "matters revealed to Mrs. White in vision, were not a word for word narration of events with their lessons, but that they were generally flash-light or panoramic views of various scenes in the experiences of men, sometimes in the past, and sometimes in the future, together with the lessons connected with these experiences."
 

Likewise she was told about Ellen's tendency to make errors of mechanic (spelling, capitalization, punctuation) and of syntax, to be repetitious, and to fall short of organizing her material well - all of which the editors should correct, modify, or rearrange for clarity and effectiveness. (6)
 

Fannie enjoyed working on articles for publication, according to White and Robinson, but "she found the copying of letters of reproof to be distasteful and revolting to her. She was heard to say that she wished there were no such word as 'don't' in the English language." (7)
 

The first year of working with Fannie seemed a happy experience for Ellen. She wrote on February 13, 1888: "Fannie Bolton is a treasure to me. We are all harmonious, all working unitedly and in love." (8)
 

Fannie, however, was finding some aspects of her work appalling. Early during her employment she showed Marian some material she was working on, and to her surprise Marian asked if she had compared the chronology with Eidersheim or another standard religious writer. When Fannie told her that the Lord was a correct historian, Marian replied that Ellen was not. In recounting the story for his paper, The Gathering Call, Edward S. Ballenger later wrote that Fannie, on comparing, was "shocked and astonished to face a paragraph exactly like the one in the articles she was copying, although there was no sign in the articles of its being a quotation, and on turning a page found a whole page which in the articles was only changed enough to prevent its being an exact quotation." Ballenger went on to explain that Marian tried to reassure Fannie by saying that "the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." But Fannie was not satisfied. (9)
 

In the days that followed, Fannie found that many authors' works were used without credit. Nor was credit given to Fannie or to Marian for their original work incorporated in articles going out over Ellen's name and, moreover, represented as inspired of God. Thus Fannie found herself involved in something she believed to be dishonest. Conscience-stricken and disillusioned, she brought the matter up with Ellen, in the conviction that she ought to uphold the "principle of ordinary justice and literary honesty [and be] a martyr for truth's sake." (10) There were golden rules for writing that were not being followed, she told Ellen. What Ellen said at that time is not known or included in The Story, but evidently she was intractable, inasmuch as Fannie retired to the typewriter and to doing the work assigned to her.
 

After the 1888 General Conference meeting in Minneapolis, Ellen went to live in Battle Creek; and in December Fannie and Marian were called from California. White and Robinson recollected that "on the way to Battle Creek, Miss Bolton spent a week in Chicago. There she met many of her former acquaintances, and found many things to remind her of old time experiences and ambitions. Soon after this she made it known to her fellow-workers that she was not satisfied to spend all her life in handling the thoughts and writings of another person. She had thoughts and ideas of her own, and longed to give expression to them." (11)
 

Although Fannie went on working for Ellen, the situation continued to deteriorate. At last, not yet two years after Fannie began working, White wrote to Charles H. Jones of the Pacific Health Journal on June 23, 1889, suggesting that it would be profitable for him to employ Fannie. "I believe that Sister Bolton is much better qualified for work on a journal like the Pacific Health Journal," he wrote, "for in this she would have more occasion for original work, and it would not demand the accuracy which our work on the Signs must have." (12)
 

Since Jones obviously, for whatever reason, did not employ her, Fannie continued working for Ellen, trying to "harmonize what seemed to [her] an inconsistency in the work with a worldly literary maxim that requires an author to acknowledge his editors and give credit to all works from which he quotes" and holding to "the position in [her] mind that Sister White should acknowledge her editors and every source from which she obtained suggestion or expression." (13)
 

Fannie must have kept the subject of crediting authors and editors fresh before Ellen during those months, for by the autumn of 1890 she was fired. Having found some courses that she wanted to take at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Fannie eased herself out of her job, with the exception of a few of Ellen's manuscripts that she took with her to edit. About this, Ellen wrote that Fannie "asked for some articles of mine to take with her to Ann Arbor, saying she loved the work. But I now think that she wished to use the pretext that she was employed by me in order to gain the confidence of others because I trusted her as my agent to prepare copy for my books. I see my folly now." (14)
 

Writing an apology to Ellen, Fannie said "I can not help writing to you because God has helped me so much since I last saw you. I did feel so sad about being severed from your work when I had just become so reconciled, so anxious to do it; but I cast all my perplexity on God." (15)
 

A year later, in the autumn of 1891, the General Conference asked Ellen White to go to Australia. When Sara McEnterfer unfortunately became ill with malaria, Ellen, to the surprise of others in the inner circle, invited Fannie to go with her as a replacement for Sara. Ellen acknowledged later that "Fannie pleaded hard and with tears to come with me [to Australia] to engage with me in the work of preparing articles for the papers. She declared she had met with a great change, and was not at all the person she was when she told me she desired to write herself and could not consent that her talent would be buried up in the work of preparing my articles for the papers and books. She felt she was full of the matter and had talent she must put to use in writing which she could not do connected with me." (16)
 

Once in Australia, Fannie settled into the work with her usual speed and efficiency. In a letter of October 7, 1892, she wrote that she had copied forty-two pages of the mail, had sent off seven articles for the Review and six for the Signs, and had prepared four articles more since the mail had gone. (17) On May 4, 1893, she wrote that she had rushed down town the day before and mailed eleven articles to Ellen - seven or eight for the Youth's Instructor, one for the Signs, and one for the Review. (18)
 

When campmeeting time came in 1894 (January 5-28), Fannie was ready for a vacation. Campmeetings were times for refreshing and exchanging experiences and views; and Fannie, a workaholic by nature, looked forward to them. While she was there, it is likely that friends told Fannie how wonderful it must be to work for such an inspired and brilliant writer as Ellen; and Fannie would have thought it was important to put the record straight. "She talked much to friends and acquaintances in Melbourne about the difficulties attending her work, and the faulty way in which some of the manuscripts were written," recalled White and Robinson of the occasion. "Her estimate of the great improvements made by the editors was dwelt upon, and the work of Mrs. White was belittled. Again she expressed her decided conviction that the talents of the copyists and their work should receive public recognition." (19)
 

At the same time she told Merritt G. Kellogg, half-brother of John Harvey Kellogg and William K. Kellogg, that she was "writing all the time for Sister White." Furthermore, she said that most of what she wrote was "published in the Review and Herald...as having been written by Sister White under inspiration of God...I am greatly distressed over this matter, for I feel that I am acting a deceptive part. The people are being deceived about the inspiration of what I write. I feel that it is a great wrong that anything which I write should go out under Sister White's name as an article specially inspired of God. What I write should go out over my own signature[;] then credit would be given where credit belongs." (20)
 

The essence of her complaints, as Fannie would express it to Ellen later when she looked back, was: "I thought as I have always thought before, that you did not see my perplexity, or comprehend my trouble, that IT WAS YOUR WITHHOLDING OF THE TRUTH ABOUT YOUR WRITINGS in not acknowledging your editorial help, that was at the bottom of all the perplexity, and that your work was not as you say the work of God ought to be, 'AS OPEN AS SUNLIGHT'" [emphasis added]. (21)
 

When Ellen found out that Fannie was revealing her working methods, she had a vision, according to what she told George B. Starr: "There appeared a chariot of gold and horses of silver above me, and Jesus, in royal majesty, was seated in the chariot.... Then there came the words rolling down over the clouds from the chariot from the lips of Jesus, 'Fannie Bolton is your adversary! Fanny Bolton is your adversary!' repeated three times." (22) Ellen wrote Marian also that she was "warned" that Fannie was her adversary. (23)
 

On February 6, 1894, Ellen wrote Fannie: "Now, my sister, I do not want you to be any longer connected with me in my work. I mean now, for your good, that you should never have another opportunity to do as you have done in the past." (24)
 

The only reference Ellen made in that letter to the matter of her "copying" from other authors was: "SHOULD I ATTEMPT TO VINDICATE MY COURSE TO THOSE WHO DO NOT APPRECIATE THE SPIRITUAL CHARACTER OF THE WORK WHICH IS LAID UPON ME, IT WOULD ONLY EXPOSE MYSELF AND THE WORK TO MISCONCEPTION AND MISREPRESENTATION. To present the matter before other minds would be useless, for there are but few who are really so connected with God [who] see beneath the surface appearance as to understand it. This work is one that I cannot explain." (25)
 

Since she could not explain the copying - because to do so would disclose it - Ellen wrote ad hominem on Fannie's character, about which she could say much: "You are not a safe and capable worker. Your mind is subject to changes; first it is elated, then depressed. The impression made by this frequent change is startling. Self-control is not brought into your life. You choose a life of change, crowded with different interests and occupations, therefore you cannot possibly put your life, as you suppose you have done, into this work; you are most wonderfully deceived in thinking you do this.... All you engage in tastes so strongly of the dish that it is not acceptable to God." (26)
 

On the same day Ellen wrote to her son Willie: "Her love of ambition, her love of praise, and her idea of her own ability and talent was the open door Satan had entered to not only ruin her soul, but to imperil the work given me of God.... I am in a very grave perplexity and when I see how Satan works to take the very ones who ought to be intelligent and sharp as steel to understand their position before God, and their privileges and honor to have a part in the work, become disloyal, surmising, and whispering evil and putting the same into other minds, it is time decisive measures are taken that will correct the disaffection before it shall spread farther." (27)
 

Ellen spared no rhetoric in her invective during this period. She wrote to O.A. Olsen, the General Conference president: "Her ardent love for praise and ambition was very similar to that presented to me in regard to the workings of Satan in the heavenly courts to bring disaffection among the angels." (28)
 

To Marian, she wrote: "She becomes at times as verily possessed be demons as were human beings in the days of Christ. And when these paroxysms are upon her, many think she is inspired of God. She is fluent, her words come thick and fast, and she is under the control of demons." (29)
 

"If she were converted," she wrote to George A. Irwin, soon to become the General Conference president, "she would have a clear understanding of the influence of her past misrepresentations of the work she has done for me, and would confess some of her misstatements regarding it, which have been used by the enemy to unsettle and undermine the faith of many, in the testimonies of the Spirit of God." (30)
 

To Willie, Ellen likened Fannie to Aaron and Miriam: "Aaron had been mouth-piece for Moses, and Miriam was a teacher of the women. But now come whisperings between the brother and sister in murmurings and jealousies against Moses, and they were guilty of disloyalty, not only to their Leader appointed of God but God Himself.... Those who give place to Satan's suggestions in their desperate efforts in panting for recognition of talents they flatter themselves that they possess, will be so blinded by the enemy that they will not discern sacred things in distinction from the common." In the same letter to Willie, she said that Fannie was like Eve: "Again the warning came, 'Fannie is your adversary, and is misleading minds by entertaining the suggestions of Satan as did Eve in Eden.'" (31)
 

To Fannie on the same day she wrote, in the third person singular, about Fannie's likeness to Saul: "My prayer is that God will convert the poor child [Fannie], that she may understand the leadings of His Holy Spirit. The character of Saul is a marked one. There was strength and weakness combined. Gifts of talent were bestowed upon him, and had he consecrated these gifts wholly to God, he would not have dishonored himself by his own transgression." (32)
 

Impaling Fannie thus on her sharp pen, Ellen was able to divert attention from the copying problem to Fannie's character. Nowhere in the record does Ellen say to Fannie, "Let's give credit where credit is due. Let's do the right thing." The red herring assault on Fannie's personality was the perfect tactic.
 

Fannie was remorseful, to say the least, having just lost her job, and she wrote to Ellen: "I can see just how Satan has come and has always found something in me whereby he could work to harass and distress those with whom I was associated. Self has never died fully and therefore a door was left for the entrance of the enemy. The bottom of all my trouble has been self, and that is Satanic.... In doing the work, I have looked at what was perplexing, and handling it day after day, have lost the real sense of its sacredness, and began to look upon it from a literary standpoint alone. I don't know that it is quite just to put it in that way either; for I have had a sense of what it was to me, and to all, above that of a mere literary matter.... My faith in the testimonies is stronger today than ever, and I feel that I want to put my whole influence on the side of upbuilding the faith of God's people in this great and sacred work." (33)
 

Ellen wrote back to Fannie the next day, on February 10, 1894: "I received and read your letter, and assure you that my heart is deeply touched by its contents. I accept your confession. As far as yourself and your connection with me personally is concerned, I have and do freely forgive you." (34) Fannie was rehired on the spot.
 

Whether this was startling to Ellen's cadre is not known. They knew that Fannie was good help, and Ellen needed her help. Willie's letter to Edson, his brother, on October 25, 1895, confirmed that: "She [Fannie] has remarkable talent and handles mother's matters very intelligently and rapidly, turning off more than twice as much work in a given time as any other editor mother has ever employed." (35)
 

But not all was well with Fannie. She was in the process of forming a near-adulterous relationship with a married man. Ellen had hired a youngish man by the name of W.F. Caldwell in 1893 to help Fannie with the typing. He had been separated from his wide and two children for three years. Caldwell took to the cloistered life and showed "a fondness for the society of young girls and [was] full of gaiety, conducting himself like a boy," as Ellen later wrote pejoratively to I.N. Williams, president of Caldwell's home conference. (36) Although Caldwell's wife later divorced him, this had not been done before Fannie and he had formed "the attachment and love and had been pledged to one another, Fannie to Caldwell, and Caldwell to Fannie." Ellen reported to John Harvey Kellogg. (37)
 

As meliorist, Ellen pointed out to Fannie the less-than-heroic character of Caldwell: "The Lord has a controversy with Brother Caldwell. His love of self, his love of self-gratification, and his determination to have his own way, have made him unreasonable, overbearing, dictatorial. His practice of over-eating has taxed his digestive organs, distended his stomach, and taxed his nature to endure a burden that has reacted upon the brain, and his memory is weakened." (38)
 

Fannie denied at first that there was any affection between them. "She stood before me in my tent," Ellen wrote to her friends the Tenneys, "and declared that there was nothing to the reports. For one year after this, she was good for nothing to me, only a dead, heavy load." Fannie finally admitted that she loved Caldwell with all her heart and the "three times has this cup of bliss [engagement] been presented to me, and then been snatched away." (39)
 

Although Ellen was able to nip the romance in the bud, she continued over a period of two years to write to various people about the unseemly liaison: "It is not the work connected with me that has prostrated her [Fannie's] nervous system," Ellen wrote to Willard A. Colcord. "It is practicing a course of secrecy and deception and wrong-doing. It is not the requirements made upon her, but it is kindling a fire and walking in the sparks of her own kindling in connection with her wonderful desire for another woman's husband; lovesick sentimentalism." (40)
 

Rummaging in the past, Ellen brought out Fannie's dead second romance to couple with this third incident. In Ann Arbor Fannie had met a Californian named Blakley (first name not given) and had fallen in love with him. (41) When she went to Australia, Ellen told Colcord, "she expected he [Blakley] would write her, renewing his attentions to her, but no letter was received, and she almost blasphemed God because of His providence." (42) Ellen wrote to John Harvey Kellogg also about the Blakley matter, saying that Fannie "acted at times as if possessed of an evil spirit, and she set in to make us all miserable... [and] was sometimes impudent and accusing." (43)
 

When campmeeting time rolled around in 1895 (October 17 to November 11), Fannie was there to meet her Waterloo. Again she told her secret. Ellen wrote that she stood "like a sheep bleating about the fold." (44) The bleating and the romantic entanglement were too much for Ellen. Kellogg wrote Ballenger of Fannie's report that she and Marian Davis had to go over the material copied from the books of other writers "and transpose sentences and change paragraphs and otherwise endeavor to hide the piracy," and as a result of Fannie's objections, Ellen not only dismissed her but slapped her face. (45)
 

Finally, on November 12, 1895, Ellen wrote to Marian: "I have given nothing into Fannie's hands, and never expect to give her another chance to seek to betray me and turn traitor. I have had enough of 'talent' and 'ability' to last me a lifetime." Again on November 29 she wrote to Marian, "I have served my time with Fannie Bolton." (46)
 

This was to have been the end of Fannie's term of service. Off and on, for a period of seven and a half years, Fannie had worked for Ellen. Now, the once "Christlike," "brilliant," "entertaining," "talented," "educated," and "productive" Fannie had degenerated, according to Ellen's recriminations, into a "poor, shallow soul," a "flashing meteor," a "practicer of deception," a "lovesick sentimentalist," a "pretentious actor," a "poor, deluded, misshapen character," and a "farce," and said she had become "trying," "provoking," "one-sided," "impulsive," "fickle," "unbalanced," depressed," "vacillating," and "unself-controlled." (47)
 

Incredible as it may seem, Fannie was invited to work for Ellen a fourth time. As Fannie quoted Ellen's words back to her later, Ellen said that she had been told by an "unseen presence on March 20, 1895," that Fannie was to be taken back into the work: "If she [Fannie] separates now from you,' said the spirit, 'Satan's net is prepared for her feet. She is not in a condition to be left to herself now to be consumed of herself. She feels regret and remorse. I am her Redeemer, I will restore her if she will not exalt and honor and glorify herself. If she goes from you now, there is a chain of circumstances which will bring her into difficulties which will be her ruin.'" (48)
 

In 1900 Ellen wrote to Irwin giving the reason for asking Fannie back a fourth time: "I now see why I was directed to give Fannie another trial. There are those who misunderstood me because of Fannie's misrepresentations. These were watching to see what course I would take in regard to her. They would have represented that I had abused poor Fannie Bolton. In following the directions to take her back, I took away all occasion for criticism from those who were ready to condemn me." (49)
 

But Fannie was broken in body and in spirit. The years of overwork and stress had taken their toll of her less than robust physical and emotional health, leaving Fannie in no condition to work, and she decided to return to America. Her ship sailed on May 10, 1896.
 

The conflict might have died there, but Fannie talked again and again, wavering between loyalty to her literary maxims and to Ellen and her work. In 1897 Ellen was still smarting from the reports when she wrote to Fannie in April: "I will cut off the influence of your tongue in every way I can," (50) and to the Tenneys in July: "Her imagination is very strong, and she makes such exaggerated statements that her words are not trustworthy." (51)
 

Fannie had given the reason for her conflict in 1894. "I felt that you were the servant of God," she wrote to Ellen, "and that I should be with you, there would be more hope of my salvation, than if I remained in any other branch of work. I thought that were I editing your writings, I should be found in the time of judgment giving meat in due season." (52)
 

Finally, in 1901, to the great relief of Ellen's supporters, Fannie wrote what they considered to be her true confession: "I thank God that He has kept Sister White from following my supposed superior wisdom and righteousness, and has kept her from acknowledging editors or authors; but has given to the people the unadulterated expression of God's mind. Had she done as I wished her to do, the gift would have been degraded to a common authorship, its importance lost, its authority undermined, and its blessing lost to the world." (53)
 

The last letter Ellen wrote to or about Fannie, according to The Story, was the one to Irwin in 1900. She was nearing age seventy-three, and Fannie was in her forty-first year. Perhaps Willie took over the controversy at that time. He wrote to Stephen N. Haskell: "It is no doubt a relief to you to write a few lines in each letter about Sister Bolton [to Ellen], but unless there is some obvious good to be accomplished, something definite to be done in response to what you write, it would be much pleasanter for Mother and greatly for the advancement of her work if such unpleasant things were not mentioned. The loss of two or three night's sleep over such a matter may deprive Mother of the strength which might have been used in bringing out some very important general matter for the instruction of the churches." (54)
 

In 1911, when Fannie was fifty-two years of age, her emotional health broke, and she was admitted to the Kalamazoo State Hospital. She was released after thirteen months (February 20, 1911, to March 18, 1912). Less than two years before she died, she was admitted again for three months (October 9, 1924, to January 21, 1925). To Fannie's detractors, this was an indication that divine retribution was being meted out in the here and now, and positive proof that she had been unbalanced all along.
 

Fannie was heard from off and on during the years following her employment with Ellen. As late as 1914 she wrote: "I was with Mrs. White for seven and a half years like a soul on a rock, because of all kinds of inconsistencies, injustices and chicaneries." (55)
 

Three songs for which she had composed the music, one with words, were published in Christ in Song. (56) In her possession when she died, according to Hattie L. Porter, "were a lot of poems, some finished, and some not. She had thought to get them out in book form, but was too near the end of life to finish the work. Some of these poems were worthy of a place in our papers, and some showed her physical powers had weakened, and her mentality could not operate. These she knew were incomplete, and she called them 'Junk.'" (57)
 

There was an Adventist man, Hattie wrote, who had wanted to marry Fannie; "but she could not see light in such a course with her health gone, but he visited her often, paid for her room and board and care, and funeral expenses, together with the sustentation check sent." (58) (Whether the man was Blakley or Caldwell or someone else is not known.)
 

Fannie died in 1926 at Battle Creek, according to the Review, on June 28. She was not yet sixty-seven years of age. Her friend Hattie wrote the obituary for the Review: "The peaceful expression on her face told us she felt ready to meet her Master." One of Fannie's own compositions was sung - "Not I but Christ." She was buried at Eureka, Michigan. (59)
 

Ironically, her death certificate gives her occupation as "letter writer," the part of her work for Ellen that she disliked the very most.
 

1. The Calhoun Country, Michigan, death certificate (213-3126) filed 1 July 1926 for Frances E. Bolton, 36 Manchester Street, Battle Creek, notes that the informant for the "personal and historical particulars" was Josephine Huffman, of 68 Oaklawn Street.

59. Advent Review and Sabbath Herald 103:41 (5 August 1926), p. 22.

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The story of Fannie Bolton, Ellen G. White's most controversial literary associate, cannot be told adequately or completely without the story of Ellen's longtime literary associate, Marian Davis.

Marian was born on August 21, 1847, at North Berwick, Maine, to Obadiah and Elmira O. Davis. Her given name was Mary Ann, which she used until she was in her thirties. She was the oldest of four children, Grace being the next younger, then Obadiah, and last Ella. If there are any extant pictures of Marian, none has been found thus far. If she looked anything like her sister Ella, she had brown hair and a small, serious face with pleasing features.

When Marian was four years old, her mother became a Seventh-day Adventist; and soon afterward her father, who had been in California during the gold rush, also accepted the faith. In 1868, the year she was twenty-one, she went with her family to Battle Creek, Michigan. Shortly after that, Marian accepted a position teaching in a country school. Teaching proved to be so taxing that her health was affected, and she had to stay home a year to recuperate. Later she took work as a proofreader at the Review and Herald publishing plant.
 

Double tragedy struck the family in 1876. Grace died of "lung fever" on March 17, and then ten days later, on March 27, their mother died. Marian and her father wrote the obituaries for the Review. (1)
 

In 1880 Ella married William K. Kellogg, owner of the W.K. Kellogg Cornflakes Company. Obadiah went into business and became known for the durability of his electric water pumps.
 

When James and Ellen White took a wagon trip to Colorado in 1879, they invited Marian to accompany them. Marian went by railway from Michigan to Texas to join the eight wagons already en route. The story of the trip is told by Eileen E. Lantry in a children's book entitled Miss Marian's Gold. (2) Marian was thirty-two years of age when she started the journey that was to be the beginning of a quarter century's adventure to exotic and interesting places. When Ellen traveled - to California in 1882, to Europe in 1885, again to California in 1887, to Michigan in 1889, to Australia in 1891, and again to California in 1900 - Marian accompanied her to do her manuscript editing.
 

Marian became what Ellen called her "bookmaker." "She takes my articles which are published in the papers, and pastes them in blank books," Ellen wrote to George A. Irwin, who would soon become the next president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. "She also has a copy of all the letters I write. In preparing a chapter for a book, Marian remembers that I have written something on that special point, which may make the matter more forcible. She begins to search for this, and if when she finds it, she sees that it will make the chapter more clear, she adds it." (3)
 

Fortunately Marian's memory was very good. To draw from, she had at least "thirty scrapbooks, a half dozen bound volumes, and fifty manuscripts, all covering thousands of pages" of Ellen White's materials, besides a large library of books. (4) Also she attended classes and meetings and took notes that would help cover a given subject, such as the life of Christ.
 

Ellen had been "an interested reader of religious journals," according to William C. White, her son, "and during the many years that Uriah Smith was editor of the Review, it was her custom to request him after [he had] made use of the religious exchanges, to pass them over to her and she would spend a portion of her time in scanning them in selecting precious things which sometimes appeared in the Review. In these she also gathered information regarding what was going on in the religious world." (5) This was information that was also available for Marian to peruse for her bookmaking activities.
 

Marian was extremely conscientious about her work and would be very painstaking about bringing numerous details to the attention of Ellen or Willie for clarification. This could be very annoying to Ellen at times, as she wanted to get on with her "own thing," whatever it might be at the time.
 

On one occasion Ellen wrote to Mary, her daughter-in-law: "Willie is in meeting early and late, devising, planning for the doing of better and more efficient work in the cause of God.... Marian will go to him for some little matters that it seems she could settle for herself. She is nervous and hurried and he so worn he has to just shut his teeth together and hold his nerves as best he can. I have had a talk with her and told her she must settle many things herself that she has been bringing Willie.... She must just carry some of these things that belong to her part of the work, and not bring them before him nor worry his mind with them. Sometimes I think she will kill us both, all unnecessarily, with her little things she can just as well settle herself as to bring them before us. Every little change of a word she wants us to see. I am about tired of this business." (6)
 

Marian's experience, for one thing, taught her that the omission, addition, or misuse of a word or a comma can make all the difference in the world to meaning and clarity and can confuse or mislead rather than enlighten the reader. In other words, she was a skilled editor.
 

Further, Marian herself was clearly searching, studying, and selecting pertinent material not from Ellen's scrapbooks alone but from the works of other religious writers (Alfred Edersheim, William Hanna, John Harris, Daniel March, Henry Melvill, to name some) and from various Adventist ministers she heard lecture or obtained advice from in order to familiarize herself with the subject. Certainly it would follow, then, that she would be anxious that the manuscript work resulting from her searching's, incorporating, and organizing be scrutinized thoroughly. Whose work should be more carefully done than that of "the prophet" speaking for God?
 

Zealous supporters of Ellen at times referred to Marian, Fannie, and others loosely as "copyists" (which means their editing would be limited to "mechanics" such as correcting simple grammar, spelling, punctuation) - thus subtly minimizing the associate. There are numerous pieces of evidence to indicate that Ellen's literary assistants, by whatever title, in fact did what is called 'substantive editing' - that is, rewriting, reorganizing, and suggesting ways to reinforce or modify the content - plus much more. Marian, who researched for content ideas, organization, and expression and who attended to paraphrasing, was not called "bookmaker" without reason.
 

The matter of using quotation marks for material drawn from the work of other religious writers eventually came up for discussion. William C. White and Dores E. Robinson wrote: "Mrs. White made no effort to conceal the fact that she had copied from other writers, statements that exactly suited her purpose. And in her handwritten manuscripts, most of the passages that she had copied word for word, were enclosed in quotation marks. But there were also many passages that were paraphrased.... The question arose, How shall these passages be handled? Much time would be required to study each passage and mark it consistently. The printers were waiting for copy, and the public were waiting for the book. Then it was decided to leave out the quotation marks entirely. And in that way the book was printed." (7)
 

Vesta J. Farnsworth, who was in Australia during the time Ellen was there, wrote that Marian "had shared in the decision to leave out quotation marks in the early edition of [The] Great Controversy and to the using of the general acknowledgment in the Preface. Then when there came severe criticism for this, she, with Sister White and her associates, felt it very keenly." (8)
 

That Marian was upset and weeping herself to sleep night after night eventually got back to the family, according to Obadiah, and they worried about her because the health of their sister was not robust. (9)
 

Dudley M. Canright, one of Ellen's biographers, wrote that Marian "was one day heard moaning in her room. Going in, another worker inquired the cause of her trouble. Miss Davis replied: 'I wish I could die! I wish I could die!' 'Why, what is the matter?' asked the other. 'Oh,' Miss Davis said, 'this terrible plagiarism.'" (10)
 

Farnsworth commented on that story: "If this be true, it is only one of the many things connected with her [Marian's] work over which she was deeply distressed. Sister Marian Davis was exceedingly faithful and conscientious in her labors, and felt keenly her responsibility in the work entrusted to her in connection with Sister White's writings. She was frail of body and often low spirited. Many times she besought the prayers and the counsel of her associates and fellow workers. And by the help of God she did a noble work. She loved the work better than her life, and anything which affected it affected her." (11)
 

When Marian talked with Charles E. Stewart, a doctor in Battle Creek, she told him about her problems with her editing. He referred to this incident, without divulging the person's name, in a lengthy letter that he wrote to Ellen in 1907: "I am informed by a trustworthy person, that you in the preparation of your various works, consulted freely other authors; and that it was sometimes very difficult to arrange the matter for your books in such a way as to prevent the readers from detecting that many of the ideas had been taken from other authors." (12)
 

The work seemed to go fairly smoothly between Ellen and Marian until Fannie joined them. Then things began to happen. Ellen wrote that Fannie "would talk to my workers, especially Marian, and get her stirred up so that I could hardly get along with Marian. She was like another person, infused with a spirit that was excitable and unexplainable." (13)
 

What the editors talked about was the giving of credit to authors and editors. Fannie, according to Ellen in a letter to Ole A. Olsen, General Conference president at the time, "talked these things to Marian and Marian has been led into much of the same views, but not to the extent of Fannie." (14) Fannie talked to various ones about how the books were organized and written, and Ellen wrote, "she presented the matter to them in such as way that they thought injustice had been done to Fannie and Marian.... Fannie represented that she and Marian had brought all the talent and sharpness into my books, yet [they] were both ignored and set aside, and all the credit came to me." (15)
 

Fannie had "created such a state of things in her representations," Ellen wrote to John Harvey Kellogg, "that you would have supposed her to be the author of the articles she prepared, and maintained that it should be acknowledged that Marian and Fannie were in copartnership with me in the publications bearing my signature." (16)
 

Ellen finally brought this to a head one day in conversation with Fannie. She recounted the incident thus to Willie: "Should [my writings] be published Mrs. E.G. White, Fannie Bolton, and Marian Davis are a company concern in these productions? "oh," she says, 'I do not know, I do not know. I have been tempted. I am full of pride.'" (17)
 

After Fannie was discharged, Marian, according to Ellen, became "just as peaceable as she used to be." (18) However, when Ellen was upset with Marian, she was relegated from the "trustworthy bookmaker" to "poor little Marian."
 

Marian's father died in Battle Creek on March 1, 1903. In May of the same year Marian attended the General Conference meeting in Oakland, California. While she was there she caught a cold that settled in her lungs, and she was hospitalized at the St. Helena Sanitarium and Hospital. Gradually she seemed to recover from her lung problem, and she went back to work on Ellen's latest tome, The Ministry of Healing. But her appetite and strength never returned. Finally, when she became so weak that she could no longer sit at her typewriter, she was hospitalized again. Because she was unable to eat or sleep, she continued wasting away and never recovered. (19)
 

According to Canright, "it is said that before her death Miss Davis was greatly troubled over the connection she had had with Mrs. White's plagiarism, for she knew how extensively it had been carried on." (20)
 

That Marian was troubled can be read in letters written to her during that time by Ellen, who was traveling in the East. On August 24, 1904: "Let not one anxious thought come into your mind." On September 16: "I am grieved that you are troubled in mind.... He [God] has no such feelings of condemnation as you imagine. I want you to stop thinking that the Lord does not love you.... You need not think that you have done anything which would lead God to treat you with severity. I know better." (21) Even on October 9, when Ellen returned to California from her trip, she could not succeed in persuading Marian to eat.
 

At four o'clock on the afternoon of October 25, 1904, Marian - who had made The Desire of Ages sing, and who had given sinew and beauty to many other works for Ellen - was dead. Her funeral was held the next day in the St. Helena Church, and she was buried at St. Helena. In attendance were her sister, Ella Kellogg, and her niece, Beth Kellogg.
 

Willie wrote the obituary, a full column in length, for the Review. He described her as an "efficient laborer in the literary departments of our work.... [She] has been a most efficient and trusted worker, preparing for the press tracts, pamphlets, and books, and articles for our numerous periodicals." As for the thoughts that were troubling Marian at the time, Willie wrote that "Sister Davis sometimes, during her sickness, mourned because the imperfections of her work and experience, but at the last she grasped the firm promises of God, and found peace and rest and joy in the Lord." (22)
 

One further account stated that Marian died of tuberculosis. But, curiously, her death certificate states that she died of anemia. She was fifty-seven years old, and she weighed fifty-seven pounds. Could it have been that starvation was the only way out of a situation that she could no longer tolerate?
 

Even after the deaths of Marian and Fannie, the seeds of doubt about the authorship of Ellen's writings continued to sprout and flourish.
 

White and Robinson spent the year of 1933 endeavoring to compose an explanation of Ellen's writings so that members of the Adventists denomination would understand, once and for all time, how the "gift" worked. Together they wrote "A Statement Regarding the Experiences of Fannie Bolton in Relation to Her Work for Mrs. Ellen G. White," "Brief Statements Regarding the Writings of Ellen G. White," and "The Work of Mrs. E.G. White's Editors." Also, White wrote "The Story of a Popular Book, Steps to Christ," and Robinson wrote "The Authorship of Steps to Christ." All of these were issued at the time in typewritten form.
 

In their "Brief Statements" they recorded that "in later years when Mrs. White became aware that some of the readers of her books were perplexed over the question as to whether her copying from other writers was an infringement on somebody's rights, the inquiry was raised, 'Who has been injured?' No injustice or injury could be named." (23)
 

But Ellen knew who would be injured. "Fannie Bolton can hurt me as no other person can," she had said with some warmth to Merritt Kellogg.(24) In 1895, Ellen had said: "She [Fannie] has misrepresented me and hurt me terribly. Only in connection with my work has she hurt me. She has reported to others that she has the same as made over my articles, that she has put her whole soul into them, and I had the credit of the ability she had given to these writings." (25)
 

According to Ellen, one of the greatest sins was Fannie's talking. Fannie wrote her in 1897: "I thought the only thing you disliked in me was speaking of the matter at all, that you wanted me to maintain secrecy about it all, but I thought that in justice to yourself, your work, your editors and readers, you yourself should have acknowledged your editor's work. In this matter I thought if I did not tell what I thought to be true, I would be a party in what I thought was not perfectly honest, open dealing." (26)
 

The Fannie Bolton Story was released by the White Estate in 1982 with the expectation, one suspects, of vindicating Ellen. Ironically, Walter T. Rea's The White Lie, which came out almost simultaneously demonstrating that much of Ellen's material was copied, in effect vindicated Fannie and Marian. (27)
 

The conflict between the protagonist and the two antagonists ended with their deaths - Ellen died in 1915, Marian in 1904, and Fannie in 1926. But the central conflict - with its significant literary, ethical, and theological implications - has never been resolved, and hence the story cannot yet end.
 

Throughout the years, from the earliest Adventist beginnings, there have been protests - sometimes as muffled mutterings, but in this century as crescendoing cacophony. Officials and apologists in the church have always responded by shifting from one justification to another:
 

1. ELLEN DID NOT COPY. "I do not write one article in the paper expressing merely my own ideas They are what God has opened before me in vision - the precious rays of light shining from the throne." (28) This explanation faded away after assistants for research, writing, and editing were employed for Ellen.

    

2. ELLEN USED THE WORDS OF ONLY HISTORIANS. "In some cases where a historian has so grouped together events as to afford, in brief, a comprehensive view of the subject, or has summarized details in a convenient manner, his words have been quoted; but in some instances no specific credit has been given, since the quotations are not given for the purpose of citing that writer as authority, but because his statement affords a ready and forcible presentation of the subject." (29) That line of justifying was dropped when it became necessary to concede that subject matter other than history was copied: "She was told that in the reading of religious books and journals, she would find precious gems of truth expressed in acceptable language, and that she would be given help from heaven to recognize these and to separate them from the rubbish of error with which she would sometimes find them associated." (30)

    

3. ELLEN USED THE AD HOMINEM APPROACH. Fannie is the problem. She is unbalanced; therefore you cannot believe what she says. By giving the inquirer a more lurid topic to pursue, she got him off the subject of copying, a subject about which Ellen could not speak.

    

4. PARAPHRASING WAS SAID TO BE ACCEPTABLE A CENTURY AGO. Since "everybody was doing it," it was all right for Ellen to paraphrase ideas. "In the nineteenth century, plagiarism was known and condemned, but uncredited paraphrasing was widely practiced." (31) (It has also been widely practiced by college students whose teachers judged them cheaters.) Do two wrongs make a right? One can use the same analogy to excuse adultery or tax cheating.
    

    

5. BIBLE WRITERS COPIED. "An instructive parallel" is found among the Gospel. More than ninety percent of the Gospel of Mark, the apologists point out, is paralleled by passages in Matthew and Luke.(32) This kind of argument for license is akin to the ad hominem argument; turn your eyes to the Bible and see what its writers did. Published material, however, is not the same as oral tradition.

    

6. ELLEN'S COPYING WAS NOT ILLEGAL. On the basis of "our review of the facts and legal precedents, we conclude that Ellen G. White was not a plagiarist and her works did not constitute copyright infringement/piracy," wrote Vincent L. Ramik of Diller, Ramik & Wight, Ltd. (33) It must be said here that any lawyer worth his salt brings forward arguments intended to support or vindicate the clients paying him. Today the problem of legality under the copyright law is not the major issue in the conflict pertaining to the writings of Ellen White. The problems are those of questionable ETHICS (taking and camouflaging matter already published by other writers) and of a muddled meaning of INSPIRATION (presenting the White version of others' material as "precious rays of truth shining from the throne," usually interpreted to mean having come direct to her from God).

    

7. ELLEN WAS UNINFORMED ABOUT LITERARY STANDARDS. "She acted without knowledge of the literary standards that would count a moderate use of [others'] writings as unfair or worthy of condemnation." (34) Not so. She had to know, rather early in her experience, that John N. Andrews, her close associate and friend (whose material she copied without crediting him), carefully credited the works he had studied in his preparations. She had to know that Edersheim, and those others from whom she read and drew, credited their sources. That was what Fannie's message was all about (and likewise what was thought to have troubled Marian).

    

8. GOD'S WORDS BELONG TO EVERYONE. "God is the author and owner of all truth, just as the tree is the author and owner of its fruit. God provides truth unstintingly to all who will receive it and use it." (35) Perhaps the same argument could hold true for the money in the bank and the cattle on a thousand hills. They belong to God. Is it all right, then, to steal them for God's cause? The end does not justify the means in either case.
    

    

9. THE WORDS ARE NOT THE IMPORTANT PART OF ELLEN'S WRITINGS. "Ellen White closed her letter [July 17, 1906] with a statement suggesting that the problems surrounding her work were the result of focusing on the words rather than the message of her writings," said the White Estate. (36) One wonders if that is really what they meant to say. One cannot have messages without words, unless the messages are on the nonverbal level - and that is another study. Words - their denotation, connotation, and signification - are the symbols or signs that convey meaning when they are arranged in relational patterns. (37) "The essential act of thought is symbolization.... One cannot think without symbols." (38)

This technical and complex philosophical subject in the field of logical empiricism is probably not what the White Estate wanted to get into at all. What they no doubt meant, but could not say, was that "the problems surrounding her work were the result of focusing on the [unacknowledged use of] words rather than the message of her writings."
 

Creative as these various justifications for copying may be, they are no substitute for truth.
 

Credit must be given to the White Estate, the Biblical Research Institute, and the President of the General Conference for conceding that "the amount of borrowing was greater than they had previously known." (39) However, when the officials, apologists, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church at large can go that one step further and acknowledge that Ellen was wrong to copy without giving credit to the sources used, then the conflict recounted in "The Unfinished Story of Fannie Bolton and Marian Davis" will end.

39. Neal C. Wilson, "This I Believe about Ellen G. White," Adventist Review, 20 March 1980, pp. 8-10.