The Ellen G. White Letters and Manuscripts: Volume 1

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LILLIS, Henry (c. 1807-after 1860) and Eliza (c. 1811-after 1860)

A carpenter living in Oswego, New York, in the 1850s and 1860s, Henry Lillis is most likely the “Lillis” of Oswego mentioned in several Sabbatarian sources of the early 1850s. Ellen White held a meeting in his house in 1850. In 1851, during another meeting in his house, Lillis, apparently of a rash temperament, threatened O.R.L. Crozier that “if he did not go out of his house he would put him out.” Crozier, who by this time opposed the Sabbatarian Adventists, complained bitterly of this mistreatment in the Advent Harbinger. Ellen White is reported to have reproved Lillis for his rashness. 1EGWLM 862.1

Sometime between 1854 and 1855 Henry Lillis joined the breakaway Messenger Party. Loughborough recorded that he, Cottrell, and the Whites held a meeting in Oswego in 1855, which Lillis disturbed by distributing the dissident party's paper, the Messenger of Truth. The last mention of Lillis is in a report in 1858 by James White on the decline of the Messenger Party in which he notes that Lillis had become a Spiritualist. 1EGWLM 862.2

See: 1850 U.S. Federal Census, “Henry Lillis,” New York, Oswego County, Oswego, Ward 3, p. 190; 1860 U.S. Federal Census, “Henry Lillies [sic],” New York, Oswego County, Oswego, Ward 4, p. 45; Ellen G. White, Lt 8, 1850 (Aug. 4); “The Cause Wounded,” Review, Aug. 19, 1851, p. 11; O.R.L. Crozier, “Brief Tour: Oswego-Auburn-Seneca Falls-Geneva,” Advent Harbinger and Bible Advocate, Aug. 16, 1851, p. 70; J. N. Loughborough, The Great Second Advent Movement, p. 325; J. W. [James White], “A Sketch of the Rise and Progress of the Present Truth,” Review, Jan. 14, 1858, p. 77; SDAE, s.v. “Messenger Party.” 1EGWLM 862.3