The Ellen G. White Letters and Manuscripts: Volume 1

WAGGONER, Joseph Harvey (1820-1889) and Maryetta (1823-1908)

A prominent early Adventist editor, author, and evangelist, Joseph H. Waggoner was born in Pennsylvania and married Maryetta Hall in 1845. Among their 10 children was Ellet J. Waggoner, who, with A. T. Jones, was prominent in the 1888 righteousness by faith revival. At the time of their conversion to Sabbatarian Adventism in the winter of 1851-1852, Waggoner was editor of the newspaper Sauk County Democrat in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Within a few months he began to propagate his new faith. Too poor to afford transportation, Waggoner often undertook his early evangelistic journeys on foot. “Brn. Phelps and Waggoner,” James White reported in 1854, “have traveled many hundred miles on foot to get the truth before the people.” After 1855 his preaching itineraries took him to various Midwestern states, and later, in the mid-1870s, to California. Waggoner was also a lucid and prodigious writer, publishing several hundred articles and a number of theological books, including The Nature and Tendency of Modern Spiritualism (1857), The Atonement (1884), and From Eden to Eden (1890). After James White's death he also composed the (anonymous) “Appendix” to Life Sketches … of Elder James White, and His Wife, Mrs. Ellen G. White” (1888). 1EGWLM 900.5

Despite the domestic turmoil of his last decade, as outlined below, it was during these years that Joseph Waggoner made some of his most important contributions. From 1879 to 1886 he edited the West Coast paper Signs of the Times, first as “resident editor” and from 1881 as editor in chief. In 1885 his zeal for health reform resulted in the publication of the Pacific Health Journal, of which he was both founder and editor. During the same year Waggoner was largely instrumental in founding and editing the American Sentinel, devoted to issues of religious liberty. Then from 1887 to 1889 he closed his lifework in Switzerland as editor in chief of French and German denominational papers. 1EGWLM 901.1

Ellen White thought highly of Joseph Waggoner's abilities. “You have a valuable gift in laboring in truth and doctrine,” she told Waggoner in 1872, and in 1886 she described him as “a man blessed with superior light and knowledge, endowed with great capacity for good.” Yet his potential for church service was undermined by his turbulent domestic life, and it was on this matter that the bulk of Ellen White's letters to Joseph Waggoner focus. Much of the responsibility for the discord, especially during the early years of their married life, Ellen White placed on Maryetta. Of Joseph she wrote in 1860, “You have tried every means in your power to remove every cause of fretfulness from your wife … but in vain. … The influence of her continual fretfulness and finding fault is ruinous to your children.” Among other things Ellen counseled Joseph to “decidedly rule your own house.” Although Maryetta publicly confessed her wrongs in the columns of the Review in 1861, she appears not to have changed her ways, and by the late 1860s was involved in an adulterous affair. Joseph subsequently took Maryetta back—an unwise move against which Ellen protested in 1872. 1EGWLM 901.2

Matters took a decided turn for the worse in the early 1880s when Joseph Waggoner was working as editor at the Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association in Oakland, California. Although later maintaining that adultery was never involved, Waggoner embarked on an affair with a local church member, Mrs. Mary Charlotte (“Lottie”) Chittenden, that continued for several years. By 1882 Ellen White was aware of the situation, but rather than recommending Waggoner's termination, she sent him several warnings and appeals to break off the relationship. Unfortunately his promises to do so were not fulfilled, and by 1885 the situation had reached crisis proportions. Under pressure from both G. I. Butler, General Conference president, and Ellen White, Waggoner finally left Oakland and Mary Chittenden in mid-1886 and returned to his wife and home in Burlington, Michigan, where he stayed for almost a year in a limbo state, his future undecided. George Butler remained unconvinced of the sincerity of Joseph Waggoner's confessions and felt the church should “purge the camp” of Waggoner and others of his ilk. While she was also anxious about the depth of Waggoner's repentance, in April 1887 Ellen White urged that mercy be introduced into the equation. “If we err, let it be on the side of mercy rather than on the side of condemnation and harsh dealing.” Butler yielded to Ellen White's position, and shortly thereafter Waggoner left for Europe to serve as editor for what was to be the final two years of his life. 1EGWLM 901.3

See: Obituary: “Joseph Harvey Waggoner,” Review, Sept. 3, 1889, pp. 558, 559; obituary: “Mariette Waggoner,” Review, Mar. 5, 1908, p. 23; Harry Ellsworth Cole, A Standard History of Sauk County, Wisconsin (Chicago: Lewis Pub. Co., 1918), vol. 1, p. 443; [James White], “Western Tour,” Review, July 4, 1854, p. 172; search term “J. H. Waggoner” in Review and Herald online collection, www.adventistarchives.org.; Ellen G. White, Lt 3, 1872 (Feb. 1); Lt 51, 1886 (Sept. 6); Lt 4, 1860 (Apr. 19); Lt 16, 1887 (Apr. 21); J. H. Waggoner to Ellen White, June 28, 1882; J. H. Waggoner to “Mary Ette,” in G. I. Butler to Ellen White, [1885]; G. I. Butler to Ellen White, Aug. 23, 1886; W. C. White to J. H. Waggoner, Dec. 29, 1886; J. H. Waggoner to W. C. White, Feb. 23, 1888; Woodrow Whidden, E. J. Waggoner: From the Physician of Good News to the Agent of Division (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald, 2008), pp. 20-37, 51-53, 100, 319-321. On the identity of Mrs. Chittenden, see 1870 U.S. Federal Census, “Mary C. Chittenden,” California, San Francisco, Ward 9, p. 182; obituary: “Lottie Chittenden,” Review, Dec. 15, 1896, p. 803; obituary: “Charles Redfield Chittenden,” Pacific Union Recorder, Nov. 28, 1934, p. 6. 1EGWLM 901.4