Israel Dammon’s Trial

On Monday, February 17, 1845, Israel Dammon, one of the ex-Millerite leaders, was in court in Dover, Maine, for disturbing the peace. ^{33Edited by Frederick Hoyt, a report of the trial, published first in the Piscataquis Farmer, March 7, 1845, appeared in Spectrum, August 1987.} The immediate occasion was a Saturday evening (February 15) gathering of approximately fifty people in the nearby town of Atkinson. Visitors had come from Exeter, Garland, and Orrington, all seeking some solace and meaning to their recent disappointment only four months past. The apparent leader for that evening was Israel Dammon from Exeter, a former sea captain.MOL 473.4

Seventh-day Adventists are interested in this seemingly insignificant trial because, in the Saturday evening gathering, were young James White (23) and Ellen Harmon (17). Neither James nor Ellen was on trial, nor were they at the trial. They were incidentally mentioned by name, but they were not accused of any of the excesses that prevailed that Saturday evening.MOL 473.5

What were James White and Ellen Harmon doing at that Atkinson gathering where crawling, rolling on the floor, “holy” kissing between sexes, emphasis on no-work, shouting, etc., were part of the events in that long evening? ^{34The no-work belief was not necessarily prompted by laziness. For many, it was the logical consequence of believing that Christ had come to them personally on October 22, 1844, and that the millennium of rest had begun; thus, to plan for the future was a denial of their faith.}MOL 473.6

Shortly after her first vision in December, 1844, she was instructed to relate her vision to others, especially to disappointed ex-Millerites. ^{35Spiritual Gifts 2:35; Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 69-73. See Appendix K.} Her health was exceedingly poor; she was ravaged by tuberculosis, hardly able to walk, and “marked for the grave.” ^{36Bio., vol. 1, p. 63.} Not only was she timid by nature, she shrank from the bidding to relate her vision at a time when other visionaries were adding to the fanaticism of early 1845. ^{37Five women plus William Foy were known to be visionaries at that time and were mentioned as such in newspapers. See Spectrum, August 1987, p. 39.}MOL 473.7

But go she did—first to Poland, Maine, then to Orrington (where later she remembered first meeting James White), on to Garland, Exeter, Atkinson, and then home through Palmyra and Topsham. At Exeter, in Israel Dammon’s home, Ellen had her next significant vision “of Jesus rising from His mediatorial throne and going to the holiest as Bridegroom to receive His kingdom.” ^{38Letter 3, 1847, cited in Bio., vol. 1, p. 78.} This vision was most timely in that it helped certain ex-Millerites see beyond their “spiritualizing” of the October 22, 1844 event—that is, the Second Coming was not Jesus coming into their hearts and, thus, their religious experiences (fanaticisms) were not the validating witness of the Second Coming. These small groups were told not to allegorize or spiritualize away great Biblical truths—that God and heaven were indeed real, that the “holiest of all” was not in their hearts but in heaven where Jesus now functioned as High Priest and from which He would return with His angels in the real Second Coming.MOL 473.8

Hearing all this from a very sick teenager, the “weakest of the weak,” was not, at first, very compelling to many of those who thrived on their various interpretations of Scripture and their emotional experiences. Ellen White recalled that “a heavy burden rested upon me, from which I could not be free until I had related what had been shown me in regard to some fanatical persons who were present. I declared that they were deceived in thinking that they were actuated by the Spirit of God. My testimony was very displeasing to these persons and their sympathizers.” ^{39Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 73.}MOL 473.9

Those Maine gatherings were specifically the places where God had sent Ellen Harmon, chiefly because “these shut-door advocates were the only ones who would listen to her.” ^{40See Appendix K.} She knew the commitment and devotion of these disappointed Millerites that had marked their fervor only a short time before, in 1843 and 1844. She wrote later: “These persons were our beloved brethren, and we were longing to help them. I went into their meetings. There was much excitement, with noise and confusion.... Some appeared to be in vision, and fell to the floor. Others were jumping, dancing, and shouting. They declared that as their flesh was purified, they were ready for translation. This they repeated again and again.... They had carried their strong ideas so far that they became a reproach to the precious cause of God. These sorely repented, and some were afterward among our most reliable men and women. But there were others who ever after walked in sadness.” ^{41Selected Messages 2:34. See Appendix A for examples of similar practices in various churches during the first half of the nineteenth century.}MOL 474.1

Such was the background for this Atkinson gathering where Ellen Harmon was bidden by God to relate her first vision of December 1844, (perhaps to relate also her second vision that came only days before the Atkinson meeting). Evidences of fanaticism were all around her. But her presence was in response to duty, not an endorsement of the group’s behavior.MOL 474.2

What should we make of the observation that Ellen Harmon encouraged some to be baptized that night or they would “go to hell”? We do not know if this was the interpretation made by hearers of what she actually said, or whether she used these words. At this time Ellen did not believe in hell as a place of “eternal fire.” ^{42Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 48, 49.} If she said that unbelievers would be “lost,” most Christians in that group would have interpreted that to mean that they were “going to hell—to eternally burning hell.” From this record it seems apparent Ellen Harmon was a young soul-winner, reaching out for conversions after October 22, 1844.MOL 474.3

What happened to Israel Dammon? The record indicates that Ellen White met Dammon at Garland, Maine, sometime later. In a letter to J. N. Loughborough in 1874, she mentioned Dammon and referred to the fanaticism in Maine as “a fearful stain ... brought upon the cause of God which would cleave to the name of Adventist like the leprosy.” She described how she bore a “testimony decidedly against it wherever we met it.” Then she referred to Dammon and his group as being “in error and delusion.” Dammon, she wrote, “had the most positive evidences that the visions were of God. He became my enemy only because I bore a testimony reproving his wrongs and his fanatical course which wounded the cause of God.” ^{43Letter 2, 1874, cited in Manuscript Releases 8:236, 237. A signed statement by R. S. Webber, Feb. 9, 1891, said: “Israel Damon [sic] died October 27, 1886. For some time before his death he was in despair, or in a state of despondency, feeling that he was a lost man, as I was told by some of his brethren; and he would often say, ‘I am a lost man.’”—Loughborough, RPSDA, p. 131.}MOL 474.4