BELLE STEUNENBERG
------------
STEUNENBERG, BELLE
Best known as the wife of the murdered governor [see STEUNENBERG, FRANK].
That Belle was unable to receive people personally, that she had been utterly devastated to find Frank’s shattered body leaking life into the snow, everybody in town could well understand. (Big Trouble, page 88)
But then, at the same time, there was a thing about Belle that everybody in town could not well understand. A few years earlier, she had abruptly converted to Seventh Day Adventism1 — had abruptly left behind Caldwell’s Presbyterian Church (which she had helped found) to become one of the first Seventh Day Adventists in town. Friends and family were especially confused. They tried to understand. Some figured she had “gone off the deep end”, and that this strange conversion must be symptomatic of deeper mental issues. Others got more specific. They
…thought she was suffering from neurasthenia….
After failing to persuade her to attend the nationally-sensationalized trial of some accused conspirators in the murder of her husband, James MacFarland, the famous Pinkerton Detective, also understands:
As I understand it, Mrs. Steunengerg is a rather peculiar character and is somewhat of a religious fanatic of the Seventh Day Adventist type and looks at all matters that might transpire in a philosophical way, even to the death of her husband.
After interviewing her at home in Caldwell, Ida Crouch Hazlett, the famous Socialist Orator, also understands:
The depth of the class struggle between the economic forces of society is nowhere more evident than in this calm, placid woman…
— this from the Montana News, 3/14/1907:
Three months later, a conversation Belle had with a reporter at Seventh Day Adventist Camp-Conference in Walla Walla made some national news. She said two extraordinary things: first, that she forgave Harry Orchard for murdering her husband (she would later go on to visit Orchard in prison, then convert him to Seventh Day Adventism) — second, that this was but the beginning of the Class War.
From the Los Angeles Herald, 6/7/1907:
From Watson’s Weekly Jeffersonian, out of Atlanta GA, 6/13/1907
From the New Haven Union, 6/7/1907
And from the same:
Here she is:
Birth of Seventh Day Adventism: In upstate New York in the second quarter of the 19th Century, all sorts of new religions were born. Most famous is Mormonism. Less famous is Seventh Day Adventism. A guy named William Miller read in his bible the Book of Daniel, Chapter 8, verses 13 through 17: ….Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to the one that spoke, “For how long is this vision concerning the regular burnt offering, the transgression that makes desolate, and the giving over of the sanctuary and the host to be trampled?” And he answered him, “For TWO THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED EVENINGS AND MORNINGS; then the sanctuary will be restored to its rightful state… When I, Daniel, had seen this vision, I tried to understand it. Then someone appeared standing before me, having the appearance of a man, and I heard a human voice by the Ulai calling, “Gabriel, help this man understand the vision”. So he came near where I stood; and when he came I became frightened and fell prostrate. But he said to me, “Understand, O Mortal, that the vision is for the time of the end.”.... Miller then, in line with a number of ancient and modern authorities, read the biblical “day” as = “one year” — this so that “2,300 evenings and mornings” = 2,300 years. He then added 2,300 to ‘negative 457’ (= 457 BZ = the year of Artaxerxes One’s decree to rebuild the city of Jerusalem) and, in this way, determined that 1843 AZ would be the “time of the end”. The date would soon be refined to 10/22/1844, a Tuesday. Then 10/22/1844 came and nothing happened. Then everybody disagreed about what, exactly, was supposed to have happened. What we now call “Seventh Day Adventism” was born out of the suggestion that when Daniel saw “the sanctuary” it symbolized not the earth, but heaven — and that, therefore, what Gabriel called “the end” meant not an earthly event on 10/22/1844, but a heavenly event on that same day.