STOWELL, Lewis Oswald (1828-1918) and Mary Melissa (1839-1899)

Lewis Oswald Stowell and his sister Marion C. (Stowell) Crawford are best known for being the first of future Seventh-day Adventists in Maine to adopt Sabbathkeeping. It was in the spring of 1845 that these teenagers from Paris, Maine, began to keep the Sabbath after studying a tract by T. M. Preble. They were soon joined by their parents, Lewis Barnard and Laura B. Stowell, and several other families in the area.1EGWLM 895.1

Oswald Stowell (he was known by his middle name) joined the staff at the Review printing office in Rochester, New York, in 1852, operating the hand press and boarding with James and Ellen White. He apparently left Review employ in 1855 or earlier, since there is no record of Stowell's moving to Battle Creek when the press moved there in 1855. For the next 30 or so years he was a farmer in Illinois while remaining an active layperson and giving generously to church causes. Several poems by Mary Stowell were published in the Review. The 1910 census revealed that the widowed Oswald Stowell was living with his daughter, Cora Belle, and her husband, Albion Fox Ballenger, in Riverside, California. By this time A. F. Ballenger, previously a prominent Seventh-day Adventist minister, writer, and editor, had apostatized. Stowell, however, did not adopt Ballenger's variant doctrinal views, as his obituary writer pointed out: “Brother Stowell remained a firm believer in every principle of the message till the hour of his death.”1EGWLM 895.2

Two striking incidents involving Ellen White and Oswald Stowell have been recorded. In the first, Oswald, age 21, was present at a conference in Topsham, Maine, in 1849 at which Ellen White received a vision. According to an observer, Ellen White, while in vision, “laying the Bible on Oswell Stowell,” uttered an admonition including the words “let not its pages be closed, read it carefully.” Three years later, in 1852, while living with the Whites in Rochester, Oswald was suffering “from a very severe attack of pleurisy, and had been given up by the physician to die,” according to J. N. Loughborough's account. Following prayer by the Whites, Loughborough, and several others at Oswald's bedside, and after anointing with oil by James White, Oswald “was instantly healed.”1EGWLM 895.3

See: Obituary: “Lewis Oswald Stowell,” Review, Oct. 17, 1918, p. 12; obituary: “Mary Melissa Stowell,” Review, Jan. 30, 1900, p. 78; W.H.H. Stowell, The Stowell Genealogy: A Record of the Descendants of Samuel Stowell of Hingham, Mass. (Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle Co., 1922), pp. 614, 615; Mrs. M. C. Stowell Crawford, “A Letter From a Veteran Worker,” Southern Watchman, Apr. 25, 1905, p. 278; T. M. Preble, A Tract, Showing That the Seventh Day Should Be Observed as the Sabbath, Instead of the First Day; “According to the Commandment” (Nashua, N.H.: Murray and Kimball, 1845); “The Review and Herald,” Review, Oct. 14, 1852, p. 96; search term “Stowell” in Review and Herald online collection, www.adventistarchives.org; 1910 U.S. Federal Census, “Stowell, Oswald,” California, Riverside County, West Riverside Township, p. 4A; SDAE, s.v. “Albion Fox Ballenger”; J. N. Loughborough, The Great Second Advent Movement, p. 318; Ellen G. White, Ms 5, 1849 (Sept. 23).1EGWLM 895.4