The Fannie Bolton Story

G. A. Irwin to E. G. White, June 11, 1900, pp. 2, 3

Then again I was interested in what you said about Fannie Bolton, and in the testimony from Sr. Davis, and also in Fannie’s own admission. I was very glad to get these letters and your instruction, for I had been somewhat in doubt as to what was my duty in the face of some developments. Of course you know that I do not believe one word of what she has said, and as I have written to you before, have no confidence in her so called conversion and her reception of the Holy Spirit and never can have until she makes some of these things right, and yet I felt that I did not wish to move hastily or unadvisedly. I was glad to receive what you wrote, for from the tenor of a letter from W. C. White to myself, a copy of which came in the last mail to Elder Haskell, we rather got the impression that you felt to censure us, thinking perhaps we had taken an extreme view of it, and gave it a coloring more than it would warrant. But in talking with Bro. Haskell, I find that he has written you similar things that have come to his knowledge while we were several hundred miles apart, and neither knew that the other had written. The facts are that her influence has gone far and wide, and we have to meet it very frequently. I would not write such things simply out of a morbid desire to send you something sensational, nor neither would I write it without being very reasonably sure that it was a fact. There have other things occurred since I wrote you before, that confirm the course that she has pursued, and in fact I think that what Elder Haskell wrote you, was from a personal interview he had with her in my house sometime after I had written, in which she herself confirmed reports I had written you. FBS 99.6

I shall endeavor to use the information you send me with good judgment and caution, but I feel that when the time does come to speak, that I shall speak with very definite language and in no uncertain sound. I do not know much about her at the present time. She went south at the call of a Methodist minister at Knoxville, Tenn. I saw some flaming reports in the papers in regard to her work and about the wonderful talks she was giving, &c. It is the general opinion of the better class of brethren in Battle Creek that the poor woman is not sound in mind. Perhaps this is enough of this. FBS 100.1