The Great Visions of Ellen G. White

Visit to Northwest Ohio

The year was 1858. GVEGW 63.5

James and Ellen White had moved two years previously from Rochester, New York, to Battle Creek, Michigan. As yet, the very first steps in formal church organization of the movement they were spearheading—choosing a corporate name and establishing a publishing house—were still two years distant. But the work of the movement was growing, and it required the personal attention of these two chief leaders. And that meant frequent travel. GVEGW 63.6

The Whites were also parents, and in the spring of 1858 three young sons were at home: Henry, 10; Edson, 8; and little Willie, nearly 4. These were being cared for right in their own home by two young women who boarded there for that purpose. The Whites themselves prepared to leave on a three-stop itinerary of northwest Ohio, scheduled for late February to mid-March. ¹⁰ GVEGW 63.7

A news note in the Review and Herald, February 18 issue, informed its readers that the Whites would attend a “conference of the commandment keepers of Ohio” at Green Spring the weekend of February 26-28. Another conference at Gilboa would be held the following weekend, March 6 and 7. (A final weekend, at Lovett’s Grove, March 13 and 14, was not mentioned in this particular press announcement.) GVEGW 63.8

James and Ellen arrived at the Green Spring depot of the Sandusky City & Indiana Railroad, the village’s first rail link with Ohio (opened only four years earlier). They were met by a “Bro. and Sr. Tillotson,” who provided transportation in their “comfortable” carriage for the 18-day, 120-mile circle-trip from Green Spring to Gilboa to Lovett’s Grove to Fremont. ¹¹ The Tillotsons, apparently “new converts,” ¹² may possibly be linked with a “Charles O. Tillotson” listed 11 years later in the county directory as a “vessel owner” resident in Fremont. ¹³ (At that time the Sandusky River was navigable from Lake Erie as far south as Fremont.) GVEGW 63.9

Green Springs (sometime during the past century an “s” was added to the town’s name) today is a hamlet of nearly 1,600, situated nine miles southeast of Fremont, where the Whites subsequently ended their two-and-one-half-week odyssey. GVEGW 64.1

Surveyed in 1839 (and first called Stem Town, after its founder), nine years before the Whites came to call, its chief claim to fame then, as now, was its possession of the “world’s largest natural sulphur springs”—hence the current name. It is part of Adams Township, which is bisected by the boundary line between Sandusky and Seneca counties. GVEGW 64.2

There were probably several hundred inhabitants in Green Spring when the Whites arrived in 1858 (the population in 1840 was 29, but by 1900 it had risen to about 1,000). ¹⁴ GVEGW 64.3