The Story of our Health Message

The Students’ Home

We are informed that the students’ home on Jefferson Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan, was planned as “a pleasant, healthful, homelike place, where order, decorum, and wholesome moral influences shall prevail, and a Christian spirit reside.” The sixteen rules prepared for the guidance of the inmates included provisions for neatness and tidiness of the rooms, keeping them “suitable for inspection at any time”; economy in the use of water and fuel, promptness at meals, circumspection in the relations between gentlemen and lady students, quietness during study period, one hour’s manual labor daily, and attendance at “family worship, Sabbath school, and Sabbath meetings.” Ibid., October and November, 1891. SHM 267.1

The supervision of the home was placed upon certain members of the class themselves. D. H. Kress, who had been a young licensed preacher in the Michigan Conference, acted as chaplain. Mrs. D. H. Kress, who as a member of the teaching staff of the medical missionary school at Battle Creek had for two years been giving instruction in physical culture and conducting cooking schools, acted as matron. The office of steward was filled by W. F. Hubbard, who ten years previously had been a dyspeptic, but through adopting the principles of the health reform regained perfect health. In his enthusiasm he had purchased a set of the health charts and begun lecturing. At length he had gone to the sanitarium for further instruction and had then decided to take the regular medical course. SHM 267.2

Other members of the happy group in Ann Arbor were George W. Burleigh, Miss Abbie Winegar, Frank Moran, Wm. A. George, Alfred B. Olsen, Howard F. Rand, David Paulson, Edgar Caro, Arthur Herr, Lou Cleveland, A. M. Beatty, F. E. Braucht, and George H. Dow. The future activities of most of these indicate the care with which they had been selected, and reveal their consecration to the true work of the medical missionary. SHM 267.3