Jane Fletcher Geniesse - American Priestess: The Extraordinary Story of Anna Spafford and the American Colony in Jerusalem

Contents

This book is dedicated to the youngest generation,
my three grandchildren:
Joe, named for the wonderful Joes;
Rob, for the special grandfathers;
and Julia, for her great-great-grandmother and her aunt.
As they decide the future, may they also study the past.

Praise, therefore, be to Him who hath made the histories of the Past an admonition unto the Present.

Sir Richard Burton, The Arabian Nights

Principal Characters

Chicago Overcomers

Anna and Horatio Spafford, and their daughters Bertha and Grace

Cousin Rob Lawrence, Horatios nephew

Aunt Maggie Lee, Horatios sister

Amelia Gould, Annas rich friend, recently widowed

William Rudy, mill owner

Caroline Merriman, Rudys foster mother

John and Mary Whiting, and their daughter Ruth. Their son John was born in Jerusalem, and the children would soon receive a substantial inheritance

Otis and Lizzie Page, and their daughter, Flora

Captain William and Mary Sylvester, who joined the group in London

Annie Aiken, the Spafford baby nurse, although only fourteen years old herself

Dr. Samuel Hedges, who did not sail with the group to Jerusalem

Members Who Joined the American Colony in Jerusalem

Elias Habib, Arab dragoman

Johanna Brooke, teacher

Jacob Eliahu, adopted by the Spaffords

Rev. Herbert Drake, companion of Chinese Gordon, and Annas tempter

Elijah Meyers, inventor, who recorded Annas messages

Rev. Edward F. Baldwin, former missionary to Morocco

Furman Baldwin, who attempted suicide over Grace Spafford

Professor John Dinsmore, educator; his wife, Mary; and their daughter, Ruth

Principal Swedes from Chicago and Ns

Olof Henrik Larsson, founder of Chicagos Swedish Evangelical Church; his wife, Mathilda; and their daughter, Edith

Olaf, Lars, Nils, and Eric Lind, brothers orphaned when their parents died in Jerusalem

Lewis Larsson, who married Edith, daughter of Olof Henrik Larsson

Jerusalem Friends of the American Colony

Rolla Floyd, tour operator, and his wife, Docia

Ali Bey Juzdar, the Overcomers landlord

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, Hebrew scholar

Ismail Bey Husseini, director of public education, Jerusalem

Frederick Vester, who married Bertha Spafford

Principal Diplomatic Antagonists

U.S. Consul Selah Merrill

U.S. Consul Edwin S. Wallace

U.S. Consul General Charles M. Dickinson

Other Antagonists

Rev. A. Hastings Kelk, London Jews Society

P. H. Winterstein, correspondent for Our Rest and Signs of the Times

Alice E. Davis, correspondent for the Age to Come

T. J. Alley, printer of the defamatory tract The Spaffordite Fraud

John and Amelia Adamson, former members who escaped

Regina Lingle, Mary Whitings mother

Professor David Lingle, Mary Whitings brother

John S. Gould, Amelia Goulds brother-in-law in charge of her estate

Rev. William K. Eddy, Presbyterian Board of Missions

Evangelists

Dwight L. Moody, leading evangelist

Ira Sankey, Moodys singing partner

Major D. W. Whittle, whose daughter married Moodys son

William E. Blackstone, author of the Blackstone Memorial

Influential Millennialists in Great Britain

John Nelson Darby, founder of the Plymouth Brethren

Lord Shaftesbury, reformer

Dr. Charles Piazza Smith, astronomer royal

CHAPTER ONE

A Beginning

The world to an end shall come

In eighteen hundred and eighty-one.

Prophecy by an anonymous author, 1488

O n a windy September day in 1881, the captain ordered the anchor dropped while the ship was still far offshore. This was routine procedure, as the port of Jaffa in Palestine was notoriously unsafe. Until that moment, however, not one of the eighteen pilgrims assembled on deck had been aware of just how difficult disembarkation might be. In their haste to leave Chicago, none had thought to pack a guidebook, and they now strained to make out details of the scene before them. The town of Jaffa seemed pretty in the morning sunlight. A mosque crowned a picturesque riot of domed houses tumbling down to the sea. There was an inviting waterfront, lined with handsome brick and stone warehouses, and orange trees abounded in the countryside around the town. But the foaming waves that crashed against a circular belt of sunken boulders between them and the shore were distinctly intimidating.1

Neither their own steamer nor any of the other large ships anchored nearby could get close to shore. This had been so since 1345, when the Egyptian Mamluks had destroyed Jaffas venerable harbor, determined that no infidel crusaders would ever again invade the Eastern lands after Sultan Baybars had expelled the last Western knights in 1271. Tradition had it that Andromeda was chained to one of these jagged rocks, and it was from Jaffaor ancient Joppathat Jonah had fled to escape being sent to Nineveh, and then was swallowed by a whale. Hiram of Tyre sent his Lebanese cedars on floats to this port for Solomon to build his great temple in Jerusalem, and in the town itself Simon the tanner had been host to Saint Peter.

The pilgrims knew these stories. Though they lacked a guidebook, they each carried a Bible, and biblical names and characters were as familiar to them as those of their families. They were both weary and excited. They had been voyaging since August 17, when they left Chicago abruptly, after nightfall. If some had not been completely ready, none could have hesitated. The glorious message for which they had been waiting had come at last. Eagerly, they obeyed the summons. The Resurrection was at hand and they were prepared to meet the Messiah.

Thus, via Quebec by train, then by steamer to London, six women, four men, a nineteen-year-old youth, two young girls, and three babies had sailed by the northern route to Liverpool. With the addition of a retired British army captain and his wife who had asked to join them in London, the little band was now close to their hearts desire. Soon they would be in Jerusalem to greet their Savior personally when He alighted on the Mount of Olives.

Within moments, a motley fleet of rowboats and little barges surging through the rock barrier threw their lines over the ships side and were bobbing against its hull. A rabble of barefooted Arabs, hoisting themselves up with ropes and chains, clambered swiftly aboard, shouting incomprehensibly. Many had daggers thrust into their wide red sashes, and all seemed enormous and frightening to the startled passengers whom the captain had only recently warned of Jaffas famously unceremonious custom of disembarkation. Clad in baggy trousers and wearing red fezzes, the boatmen fell upon passengers and baggage like a swarm of hornets, scooping men, women, children, trunks, valises, and hatboxes up in a viselike grip, and half-tossed, half-handed them over to their waiting comrades below. Finding themselves breathless and disarranged but at least safe in the heaving tenders, the ladies patted their bonnets and skirts back into order while the gentlemen offered a steadying hand. Once past the rock barrier, they were again seized by the Arab longshoremen, who carried them through the surf and up the beach, and finally set them down on Canaans sacred soil.