My mother was not wrong when she told me that Sister White loved boys and girls. So did Brother White. Children were always very dear to them. They had four children of their own—all boys. But they took other children into their family, and many of these were girls. So Sister White mothered and loved both girls and boys, and some of them grew up to be great workers for Jesus.
Brother and Sister White’s oldest son was Henry; he was born in Gorham, Maine. The next was Edson; he was born in Rocky Hill, Connecticut. Willie, the third, was born in Rochester, New York. And Herbert, the youngest, was born in Battle Creek, Michigan. Only two of them, Edson and Willie, lived long enough to grow up into men, but they were all dear children. Naming their birthplaces tells you how much Brother and Sister White moved around. They owned no home, and in those days they traveled a good deal, to carry the message of the Sabbath and of Jesus’ coming. Sometimes a good brother and sister would take them in for a while, but soon they would be called to go somewhere else.
In 1852 they moved to Rochester, New York. Here they rented a house, not only to live in, but to make room for the printing office and to take care of the several persons who worked in it. Their brethren had bought a printing press for the Review and Herald, the first one the church ever owned. it printed not only the Review and Herald and some tracts but a children’s paper too!
Now, the Adventist children back in that time did not have all the good things you have. There were no children’s meetings, no Sabbath school, no church school, no children’s paper. Children were supposed to be proper little men and women, who could go to meetings like big folks; and if they could not understand what the preacher said, anyway they must keep still. If their feet could not touch the floor, they could swing their weary little legs. if the fidgets got them, perhaps they could snuggle under their father’s arm or lay their heads on their mother’s lap and go to sleep. But as for teaching them and interesting them in the Bible and in nature as well, some parents did and some parents didn’t; mostly they didn’t. And as for being taught habits of life, the children were brought up not to use tobacco and not to drink hard cider, and that was about all.
Sister White talked and wrote much to parents about training their children, and she did not forget to speak to children too. She told parents to love their children as Jesus loved them, to take them up in their arms and sing to them the songs of Zion, to tell them Bible stories, to teach them health habits, to take them out into the garden, the woods, and the fields, especially on the Sabbath day, which God has given for just such teaching. She told children to love and obey their parents, to do their duties cheerfully, to study the Word of God, and in all their life to make themselves ready for Jesus’ coming. So things began to be better in the homes and the churches.
But though Brother and Sister White had children whom they greatly loved, they did not at first have a home to put them in. They traveled so much to carry the Bible message to people everywhere that they could not take care of their children as they wished. They had to leave them in the care of others. There were two lovely young women who helped them much with their little ones. One of these was Frances Howland; the other was Clarissa Bonfoey.
Frances and her parents lived in Topsham, Maine. Brother and Sister White lived in their house for a time, a year or so after they were married. When the Lord told them to go out and teach the message, they went, but they soon saw that they could not keep their baby Henry with them and care for him as he must be cared for. Frances Howland and her parents offered to keep him, and they did. For five years Frances gave her time and strength largely to caring for little Henry and teaching him, until his parents made a home at last in Rochester, and gathered their children together there.
Clarissa lived in MIddletown, Connecticut, and it was when James and Ellen White were invited to Brother Belden’s place that she offered to give her furniture and to keep house for them. But because they did not stay there long at a time, but traveled to teach the truth, and because they at first had little Henry with them, Clarissa also traveled with them and took care of the baby. Afterward, when Edson was born and Henry was left with the Howlands, she took care of Edson too.
But when they moved to Rochester, Brother and Sister White took little Edson; and the next year they brought six-year-old Henry there. Oh, what a happy family they were then! There were many cares and burdens for Brother and Sister White, and their home held also the workers from the printing office, but they had their boys with them at last. And they were glad, and the boys were glad. When, a year or two later, Willie was born, they thought, with a baby in the house, they had just the best family in the world.
The boys loved to sing; so did their father and mother. When, with the grownups in their family circle, they gathered together for worship every morning and every evening, they not only learned much of the Bible but many of Zion’s songs. There were not so many children’s songs then as there are now. That children’s favourite, “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know,” had not yet been written. But there were other songs that the children learned to sing.
While the two boys were still little, soon, after the Whites had set up their home in Rochester, Brother White planned a new thing. What about all the children in all the homes and churches? Were they being cared for as they ought to be, and were they being taught the ways of God? There was a paper for the big folks, but what about the little folks? James White thought they should have a paper too. So he planned for one.
What should they call it? it must be a paper not only for the littlest ones but also for the boys and girls who were older. So he decided to call it The Youth’s Instructor. In the Review and Herald he wrote: “The children should have a paper of their own, one that will interest and instruct them.” He said that God was at work among the children of believing parents, and some of them were being converted. He said that, on the other hand, some of the children were being neglected by their parents. This was not right, and God would have it changed. So the children should have a paper of their own every month.
The first number of the Youth’s Instructor was published in Rochester in August, 1852, and it cost twenty-five cents a year. If any child or his parents could not pay that, they should have it free. Twenty-five cents then meant as much as several dollars mean now.
Along with the beginning of the Youth’s Instructor went the forming of Sabbath schools. The paper printed Bible lessons for the children and youth, and urged that Sabbath schools be started to teach them. That was the beginning of Sabbath schools among us. The children’s lessons were the only lessons there were, and so the big folks studied them too. I think that was a pretty good thing, for they all studied together.
About the time Elder White printed the first number of the Instructor, a dreadful disease, cholera, struck the city of Rochester where they lived. Thousands of people, children as well as older ones, were stricken, and died. Little Edson, just three years old, fell ill with the disease. They prayed for him, and he was instantly healed. But he did not gain strength. For three days afterward he could eat nothing.
Brother and Sister White had promised to go out and hold meetings for two months, from New York to Maine. They were to travel all that way by horse and buggy. But they did not dare to leave their darling to others’ care. They asked the Lord to show them what to do, and they decided that if the little boy came to the point where he would eat, they would take it as a sign that they should go. The first day there was no change for the better; he would take no food. The next day, about noon, he called for broth, and when he had eaten he felt better.
They had to leave that very day, to get to the place where they would hold their first meeting. About four o’clock in the afternoon they started in a buggy drawn by a horse. Brother White drove while the mother of the sick boy laid him on a pillow and held him in her arms. Into the night they drove for twenty miles. The little boy was very restless and did not seem to be getting any better.
About eight o’clock they stopped for a night’s rest. In the morning Edson seemed so weak that they questioned whether they should go back home. The family they had stayed with overnight told them if they went on, they would bury their child by the roadside.
But Sister White said to her husband, “The Lord has sent us on. If we go back, the child will die. If we go on to do the Lord’s errands, he may die, but on the other hand the Lord may heal him, and he will live. Let us go on.”
They had to ride one hundred miles in the next two days, and that was swift work by horse and buggy. Sister White was so weak and tired that she could not trust herself to hold little Edson all the way. So she laid him on her lap, and tied him to her waist, and they both slept most of that day while Brother White drove on. To their great joy, little Edson grew stronger. And the next day he was stronger still. They reached the place of their appointment, held their meetings, and went on their way.
As they journeyed on their horse and buggy trip, Brother White thought of the Youth’s Instructor, and as they would sometimes stop by the roadside to eat their lunch and let the horse graze, Brother White would take paper and pencil, and on the cover of the lunch box or on the top of his hard-crowned hat, he wrote out the lessons and stories for the new children’s paper.
After that, many other papers were written for children as well as for adults. Brother White would be astonished if he could see what has come from his wonderful thought of starting a paper for the children.