The New York Times/1915/7/17/Seventh Day Founder Dies

Mrs. Ellen G. White, Adventists, Was Regarded as a Prophetess.

St. Helena, Cal. July 16.

Mrs. Ellen G. White, one of the founders of the Seventh Day Adventists, died here today, aged 88. She was widely known among members of that denomination, and by many she was regarded as their prophetess.

She is survived by two sons, James Edson White of Marshall, Mich., and William C. White.

Mrs. White was born in Gorham, Me., and when at the age of 9 she was struck in the face with a stone and disfigured for life she turned to the worship of Christ. In March, 1840, she heard William Miller, a Baptist evangelist, prophesy the second coming of Christ, which was to happen in 1843, and became converted, receiving, as she averred, a vision from God in 1844 showing her the second coming of Christ. She then decided that it was her duty to observe the Seventh-Day Sabbath, as she believed it was so observed by Christ. At about the same time she married James White, a Mayflower descendant, who died in 1881, and who became an active worker in her religion.

She believed in the ultimate annihiliation of the wicked. She traveled extensively and, besides traveling all over this country, spent two years in Europe and nine in Australia, making converts. Mrs. White wrote forty books whose circulation is said to have been more than 1,500,000 copies and her writings were translated into forty languages.