Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Miss Bolton’s Service for Mrs. White

Miss Bolton began service for Mrs. White early in 1888, at the age of 28. The record of her seven years of service is a rather tempestuous one. Previous to her employment by Mrs. White she had written a few articles for a Chicago newspaper. Other than that we have found no evidence that she had done any literary work. EGWC 479.3

In the files of the E. G. White Publications is a long exchange of correspondence between Mrs. White and Miss Bolton. The record reveals that previous to final severance in 1895, she was several times dropped from employment. The prime reason for her discontent was that she felt that her literary ability was much greater than Mrs. White’s and that she could therefore much improve the manuscripts placed in her hands by editing into them her own language and her own thoughts. On this point Mrs. White wrote to her on February 6, 1894: EGWC 479.4

“If you had the task given you of handling Old and New Testament writings, you would see large improvements to be made, great additions and subtractions and changes of expression; you would put in words and ideas to suit your standard of how it should appear. We should then have Fannie Bolton’s life and expressions, which would be considered by you a wonderful improvement; but disapproved of God.” EGWC 480.1

It was Miss Bolton, as indicated earlier, who created the story that one of Mrs. White’s secretaries had drafted a testimony for a certain person in Battle Creek. It seems that she composed this story, not so much to discredit Mrs. White, as to prove that she also had the prophetic gift. EGWC 480.2

After her final severance from Mrs. White’s employ in 1895 in Australia, where Mrs. White had been living for several years, Miss Bolton came to America. Over the years she had several times written letters of abject apology to Mrs. White for her vain and unseemly words and actions. The only picture that one can draw from these letters is that of an unstable personality kept in constant turmoil by an overweening conceit as to literary ability. Back in America she began to display the same characteristics in her statements on Mrs. White and religious subjects in general. A letter from G. A. Irwin ^* to Mrs. White, regarding Fannie Bolton’s activities, makes this observation: “It is the general opinion of the better class of brethren in Battle Creek that the poor woman is not sound in mind.”—June 11, 1900. EGWC 480.3

An undated manuscript of Miss Bolton’s, which was evidently written sometime in 1901, and addressed to “Dear Brethren in the truth” once more expresses her contrition over any wrong conceptions of Sister White that she had created by anything that she had said in the past, and confirming her confident belief that God was leading His people forward uniquely through Mrs. White. EGWC 480.4

In the years that followed she wavered back and forth. It is no secret, but a matter of open, public record, that her mind finally became unbalanced to the point that required her confinement in State hospitals for three different periods. ^* She died in 1926. EGWC 480.5