M
erlin Burt sat beside Jeanne Andrews Willumson one day in 2005, exploring piles of letters and photographs that had belonged to her ancestors. Suddenly, he stopped, his eyes riveted on the signature of Mary Andrews. No one else knew this letter existed, not even Willumson. There were more surprises to come.
In 1993, Burt, currently the director of the Ellen G. White Estate at the General Conference, began encouraging Willumson, a close family friend and the great-granddaughter of John Nevins Andrews, to share her collection with the world church. In 2005, the year of her death, she entrusted him with what he calls, “this precious heritage of faith.” It’s now housed at Andrews University’s Center for Adventist Research where Burt then served as director.
“I’ve gathered many historical resources for the church through the years,” Burt says, “but this was the most significant collection I’d ever seen.”
I asked Burt several questions about the Andrews/Spicer collection from his perspective as a church historian.
Why do you think this collection is so significant?
For many reasons. It contains many remarkable original letters from J. N. Andrews and others. Especially important are the letters Mary Andrews wrote to her father on March 8, 1876, and July 23, 1878, and to her grandmother on June 30, 1878. We knew about Mary’s role in mission, but these letters reveal her profound involvement, the influence she had on the work in Europe, and the respect people had for her. Before, most of what we knew about Mary was second-hand. Here we have details about her life written by her own hand.
Charlie and I have [language] lessons every day when it is possible . . . I have all of the German proofs to read and I think that is a pretty good lesson for me.
Excerpted from Mary’s July 23, 1878, letter to her father. Original spelling and punctuation are preserved in all quoted correspondence.
We have all been sending out papers to any address we are able to find. We send only two papers and then write a card and ask them how they like it and if they wish to continue it. Last night I got my first letter in reply to a card I had written. It was from a gentleman in Belgium. He addressed me as “Very honored Sir.”
Excerpted from Mary’s June 30, 1878, letter to her grandmother, Sarah Andrews.
Then there is the letter by Ellen White to J. N. Andrews written in 1878 after Mary’s death. She writes,
“Dear afflicted brother Andrews, we deeply sympathize with you in your great sorrow.
But we sorrow not as those who have no hope. . . . The Lord loves you, my dear brother, He loves you. . . .. A better day is coming. . . . In my last vision . . . I saw the Lord looking lovingly upon you. I saw the Life Giver come and your wife and children come from their graves clothed in immortal splendor.”
Finally, there is the letter Andrews wrote to his son, Charles, while Mary was dying. It’s filled with touching experiences he shared with her. For example, he writes,
“Two or three days before her death she said, ‘I want to sit in your lap Pa as I did when I was a little child.’ [She] came across the room, and sat down on my lap and put her arms around my neck.”
He also wrote,
“When I wheeled her out doors . . . often she would ask me to stop the little carriage, and bow down and let her kiss me. She would say, ‘You are a dear good father and I love you so tenderly.’”
Why is this collection important to the church?
It seems to me that this precious heritage of faith opens a window to the early mission work of the church and the history of God’s leading in this movement. It was like it had been kept in a time capsule all these years and, finally, it was coming to light.
What is your hope in sharing this collection with the world church?
Many of us don’t have the passion for the work of God in these last days that our early pioneers had. I felt that if we saw their deep love, commitment, and self-sacrifice for what they called, “God’s dear cause,” if we could see their dependence on God and God’s tender care and attention to His children, we too would say, “I want to be like that. I want to dedicate my life too.” If that happened, it would transform our church. The Holy Spirit could work in ways we can’t imagine. We would see new missionaries, new commitments, new sacrifices. So that’s my prayer, that’s my hope. That we ask God to awaken a fire within us and experience radical dedication to Him.