What was the relationship of Ellen White’s earliest visions to those of William Foy and Hazen Foss? ^{4The White Lie, p. 47.}

William Ellis Foy (1818-1893) and Hazen Little Foss (1819-1893) both received visions prior to the Disappointment of 1844. Both men lived to hear Ellen White relate her early visions and acknowledged that what she described, they had seen, too.TAWL 9.8

Ellen White, as a young woman, had heard Foy lecture in Portland, Maine, sometime between 1842 and 1844. Not much is known concerning him, although recent research confirms that he was a black reared near Augusta, Maine. He is often confused with Foss, but unlike Foss, Foy did tell of his visions and published the first two in a pamphlet. He never felt he had grieved the Spirit of God, and he continued to work as a Free-Will Baptist minister for many years. A brief personal history was published along with the accounts of his first two visions in 1845 in a pamphlet titled The Christian Experience of William E. Foy Together with the Two Visions He Received in the Months of Jan. and Feb. 1842. According to J. N. Loughborough, it was a third vision, in 1844, that Foy could not understand, and which he later heard Ellen White relate. So far as is known, that third vision never was published.TAWL 9.9

Hazen Foss similarly received a vision prior to the Disappointment, but he refused to relate it. When told that the vision was taken from him, he feared the consequences and called a meeting at which he tried to recall the vision but could not. He heard Ellen White relate the same vision early in 1845, and testified to her of his experience. Although for many years Foss was thought to be a relative of Ellen White’s brother-in-law, ^{5See W. C. White, “Sketches and Memories of James and Ellen G. White,” The Review and Herald, March 14, 1935, p. 10; A. W. Spalding, Origin and History of Seventh-day Adventists, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1961), p. 78, note 13.} it was not until about 1960 that the exact relationship became known through genealogical records. ^{6George Thomas Little, The Descendants of George Little (Auburn, Me.: The Author, 1882), pp. 290, 291.} Hazen was the younger brother of Samuel Hoyt Foss, who married Ellen White’s older sister, Mary, in 1842.TAWL 9.10

Both Hazen Foss and William Foy recognized the visions given to Ellen White to be the same as those given them, and since the Lord originally intended that one of these men should be His prophetic messenger to the remnant church, there would, of course, be parallels between their visions and those of Ellen White. Although a few such similarities can be seen between Foy’s published visions of heaven and those of Ellen White, there are so many marked differences that The White Lie’s allegation that her visions were “almost a carbon copy” of Foy’s is a substantial exaggeration.TAWL 9.11