From the day that the decision was made to purchase property in Washington, D.C., for the publishing house and the General Conference it was Elder Daniells' hope and expectation that Ellen G. White would make a visit to the East so she could give counsel concerning the establishment of the work there. From time to time plans for such a trip were projected and discussed, and as the spring of 1904 neared they began to take shape. One thing held Ellen G. White in the West--she felt she could not go to Washington until after the first biennial session of the Pacific Union Conference. This was called for Healdsburg, California, March 18-27.
There was even some discussion of the possibility that Ellen White would make Washington her permanent place of residence. But this she felt she could not do. At Elmshaven she was in favorable circumstances for bringing out her books, and she felt she should not be called upon to move from place to place.
From time to time definite instruction was given to her in vision concerning the work in Washington. In fact, before the property was secured in Takoma Park, she had been shown that wherever the Review and Herald and the headquarters of the work were established, there should be a sanitarium and a training school. The leading brethren had not planned on this. With the decision to make Washington the center in the East, then, the first steps were to get these institutions under way. Church leaders felt they must now have Ellen White's help. On March 1 she wrote to Edson in the South:
I have received letters saying that if I could make my home in Washington for a time, the confidence of our people would be established in the work there.--Letter 105, 1904.
Later she wrote in her diary, "They want W. C. White and his mother to help them plan and put all the wisdom together."--Manuscript 142, 1904.
The plans being formed would keep her in the East for about a year, making Washington her headquarters. But first there was the union conference session in Healdsburg, opening Friday, March 18. Ellen White made the thirty-five-mile trip by carriage. Her party passed safely through the canyon with its narrow road and steep cliffs. This passage was always a bit of concern when driving with a team of horses. She spoke Sabbath morning, March 19, to a large congregation, and then because of impaired health she was excused from other session appointments.
A storm hit the Pacific Coast, and it rained every day of the session. The weather was wet, cold, and miserable. But there was an earnest request from the townspeople that Ellen White speak at a meeting they could attend. This was arranged for Sunday afternoon, March 27. Even though there was a downpour of rain, "the large building was filled."--The Review and Herald, May 5, 1904.
While in Healdsburg, Ellen White talked with Elders Daniells and Prescott in regard to the proposed visit to Washington. She told them it was a serious question whether she should go, but if she did go she would spend only a few months there. She said, "If we decide to go, we shall be on our way in about two weeks."--Letter 121, 1904.
The return trip to Elmshaven was by train, for landslides had closed the road. The all-day trip was very tiring.
She got a new set of upper teeth so she would feel safe in making the trip to Washington. "I dare not," she declared, "leave myself with only one set of upper teeth. Should I have just one set, and should anything happen to it, I would be in a bad fix."--Letter 133, 1904.
Friday morning, April 1, she wrote in her diary:
I have not slept much the past night. The thought of change and the long journey fills me at times with dread, but then I will remember the lovingkindness of the Lord. I will be of good courage and not look on the dark side, but looking unto Jesus reflect His image, and look in my Bible daily and read.--Manuscript 141, 1904.
As the time to leave drew near, she wrote to Willie that she could not go to Washington or any place where she "would be among believers who would lay their burdens on" her (Letter 161, 1904). Night after night in great distress she prayed, "Lord, I cannot go to Washington. If You have a work for me to do there, I beseech Thee to deliver me."-- Ibid.
She reports that "the Lord drew nigh. The change came instantly. The peace of Christ filled my heart, and my brain was entirely relieved. I was at rest."-- Ibid.
April 18 was the day set to leave for the East. Though on former trips she had traveled in the Pullman compartment to afford her as easy a journey as possible, this trip, for the sake of economy, would be made in a tourist sleeping car. Their car would go directly from northern California to Washington, D. C.
In Napa Valley the cherry and prune trees were in full blossom and Ellen White regretted having to leave just then. But, as planned, on Monday morning, April 18, she and those who would travel with her were on the train for Oakland. Here C. H. Jones met them and took them forty miles south to Mountain View to visit the new site selected for the Pacific Press. Plans were well under way for the publishing house to be moved. It was a rainy, cold day, and this disappointed Ellen White, but she saw the property and was pleased with the plans being laid. "The moving of the press is a right move," she commented (Ibid.).
That evening in nearby San Jose they boarded the tourist sleeper and started their six-day trip East. In the party was Ellen White's traveling companion and nurse, Sara McEnterfer, and one of her secretaries, Maggie Hare. W. C. White had gone on in advance to attend to some business matters in southern California and would meet them there. Clarence Crisler, her leading secretary, would also join the party in Los Angeles. Marian Davis was left behind to work on the manuscript for The Ministry of Healing.
W. C. White did not miss an opportunity to secure fruit for the long cross-country trip. He purchased a bushel of large oranges in Redlands and carried them onto the train. The conductor protested, but when Willie promised to share the oranges with the passengers, he relented, and the fruit was taken on board.
The routing was by the south to ensure comfort and to avoid the high altitudes that sometimes bothered Ellen White in travel. She rested quietly on the train, remaining in her berth for the entire trip. She did a little reading and a little writing, but mostly rested and watched the scenery. As they reached the eastern part of Texas, large sugar houses, lumber mills, and cotton gins began to appear. Great plantations flanked the tracks, and Willie noted that on the best farms the old-fashioned light plows drawn by a mule had been replaced by two-horse sulky plows, much to the satisfaction of the sharecroppers. The corn and sugar cane were about ten inches high; the cotton looked like garden beans just putting out their second leaves. Rice fields were under water.
Nearing New Orleans they passed through great swamps, where many varieties of palms were heavily festooned with moss. Just west of New Orleans, Elder S. B. Horton, president of the Louisiana Conference, and E. V. Orrell, secretary of the Southern Union, met the train, bringing a basket of fruit. This supplemented the provisions they had taken from home and from southern California for their meals--malted nuts for soup, zwieback, cream sticks, oranges, bananas, apples, applesauce, olives, nuts, jelly, turnovers, boiled eggs, and bread.
In New Orleans some of the party went sightseeing with the Adventist brethren who hosted them. Ellen White remained in the sleeping car. Then, under a full moon, the train started north and ran for many miles along the shore of Lake Ponchartrain.
The train stopped for a time in Atlanta, and the traveling party was surprised to see about twenty or thirty Adventist believers at the station awaiting them. They came on board for a few minutes. Fathers, mothers, and children gathered around to shake hands. They all wanted Sister White to stop at some future time and speak.
Ellen White wrote on Wednesday morning, April 27, "Here we are in Washington." She mentioned that preparing for the journey had been a heavy drain on her and she was quite ill the first day or two. But she was happy that all in the car "seemed very much like one family. Although at times there were between thirty and forty people in the car, there was no noise, no loud talking, no card playing. All seemed like acquaintances, each interested in the other. The passengers ... showed me much kindness," she reported.
The conductor of our car was a quiet, nice-looking man of about 50 years. He seemed to understand his business well. At one station a man bought some beer at a saloon, and put it in a cupboard at the end of the car. The conductor heard of this, and promptly ordered the beer taken out, saying that he would allow no such thing on the car. During all the time we were on the train, I did not get one whiff of tobacco, excepting once or twice, when someone passed through the car with a lighted cigar in his hand....
We had many pleasant interviews with the passengers. As I talked with them, I felt an earnest desire to meet them again sometime.--Letter 141, 1904.
Describing their arrival at Washington's Pennsylvania Station, she wrote:
We spent Sunday morning packing up our belongings and getting ready to leave the car. Our numerous bags and satchels were piled up in one seat, and when the train drew into the station, Clarence [Crisler] passed them through the open window to Willie, who put them on a truck.-- Ibid.
Arrival in Washington
Ellen White was delighted to have Elder Daniells come into the car and greet them and conduct them out through the station into the city of Washington. The station was the one in which President Garfield had been shot not long before.
It was nearly noon, and the party looked forward to a little change in the rather monotonous six-day dietary program.
Elder Daniells escorted Ellen White and the party to a carriage, a two-seated surrey with a canopy top, and a large noble-looking horse named Charlie, very gentle and safe. Ellen White spoke of the promise that she would have the use of this horse and carriage while she was in Washington. She felt this was a great favor.
Elder Daniells drove the visitors first past the nearby temporary General Conference headquarters at 222 North Capitol Street, and then over to the Memorial church at 12th and M streets to see the building for which Ellen White had helped to raise funds. Then he drove the seven miles out to Takoma Park to the Carroll Manor House, which had been rented for Mrs. White's use. When they arrived, it was still full of people cleaning, repairing, painting, and furnishing, but a good dinner of tomato soup, hot boiled potatoes, and greens was ready.
Ellen White, of course, was eager to see the property that had been purchased. She had heard it described and had written about the work needed to be done there. As soon as dinner was finished, Elder Daniells, leaving Clarence Crisler and Willie White to tend to the baggage, hitched up Charlie again and took Ellen White, Sara McEnterfer, and Maggie Hare the half mile to see the site proposed for the college and the Sanitarium. Construction was to begin in a few days. Work had been held up some time for negotiations with the Takoma Park town council over the removal of a sewage disposal plant that stood near the property.
Seeing the land, Ellen White declared that the location "could not be bettered." She added, "That which is most valuable of all is the clear, beautiful stream which flows right through the land."-- Ibid.
In another letter she stated:
The location that has been secured for our school and sanitarium is all that could be desired. The land resembles representations that have been presented before me by the Lord. It is well adapted for the purpose for which it is to be used.... The atmosphere is pure, and the water is pure. A beautiful stream runs right through our land from north to south. This stream is a treasure more valuable than gold or silver. The building sites are upon fine elevations, with excellent drainage.--Letter 153, 1904.
She was well pleased, too, with her new living quarters. This would be her home for several months. The eighteen-room house was a three-story building on about ten acres of land, and was built on the highest rise of ground in the area. The house was built shortly before the Civil War by Maj. Gen. Samuel Sprigg Carroll. Willie White described it as "big, roomy, magnificent, and clumsy" (23 WCW, p. 854). After the war, Grant, Sherman, and McKinley often visited there.
On the first and second floors, on the north side, were two large rooms, sixteen by twenty-four feet. Ellen White occupied the second-floor room, with Sara and Maggie nearby. Describing her bedroom, she said:
I have a nice, comfortable room, almost as large as my office room at home. The room has four large windows, and is on the second floor. It has in it two bureaus, a washstand, a center table, several chairs, and a bed.--Letter 157, 1904.
Willie and Clarence each had rooms on the third floor, and there Clarence Crisler had his office. On the first floor was a small sitting room, a large dining room with a kitchen and pantry, and the large room directly beneath Ellen White's bedroom. Willie White used this for his office. Committee meetings were frequently held there. Willie thought the house an excellent one for hot weather, since the ceilings were twelve feet high and there were verandas on three sides.
This year the season had been a bit slow. Washington was having its first warm days, and the trees were just beginning to put on their greenery. The buds on the lilac bushes were beginning to swell and soon they were in full bloom, filling the air with their fragrance. The cherry trees, which usually blossom in early April, were in full bloom (Letter 159, 1904).
But on this property there was no place for a vegetable garden where sweet corn and tomatoes and such things could be grown, as they had at Elmshaven. She missed these and also some of the comforts of the Elmshaven home.
Sara McEnterfer, who had been appointed cook, had a difficult time. She found the chimney was bad, the stove was worse, and the fuel was green jack pine soaked by three days of rain, which Willie described as "'worsest' of all" (23 WCW, p. 853). They found that the chimney was clogged by an old stovepipe that years earlier had been inserted on the second floor to provide a heating system.
The horse and carriage that Ellen White had described so enthusiastically on the day of her arrival was a great blessing to them, but there were some problems. Charlie weighed about 1,400 pounds and held his head so high that the end of his nose was as high as Willie's head, so he had difficulty trying to harness the horse. Although described as kind and intelligent, Charlie hated the trains that occasionally passed on the Baltimore and Ohio tracks less than a mile away.
There were two important benefits to Ellen White's being in Washington at this time. First, her willingness to come, stay, and send out her letters and manuscripts with a Washington dateline added authority and prestige to the new Washington headquarters. This brought stability to the cause, as Adventists everywhere would turn their eyes eastward from Battle Creek. Second, construction was about to begin on the college buildings--the boys' dormitory was to be the first. She was intensely interested and counseled that "every part of the buildings is to bear witness that we realize that there is before us a great, unworked missionary field, and that the truth is to be established in many places."--Letter 83, 1904. There was to be no show or needless display.
The Lord's messenger urged:
The buildings that you erect must be solid and well constructed. No haphazard work is to be done. The buildings are to be thoroughly presentable, but no extravagance is to be seen. We are not to make it possible for worldlings to say that we do not believe what we preach--that the end of all things is at hand.-- Ibid.
Construction work was entrusted to an Adventist builder, A. S. Baird. The builders discovered that they could make their own large, solid concrete blocks, which would make a dry building. Sand and stone from the Sligo Creek could be used in the construction.
Ellen White took time to tour Takoma Park with Sara and to look over the tract of land straddling the District line that the brethren were negotiating to purchase from Mr. Thornton for the General Conference and the Review headquarters. As she described Takoma Park, she said:
A large part of the township is a natural forest. The houses are not small, and crowded closely together, but roomy and comfortable. They are surrounded by thrifty, second-growth pines, oaks, maples, and other beautiful trees.
The owners of these houses are mostly businessmen, many of them clerks in the government offices in Washington. They go to the city daily, returning in the evening to their quiet homes. ... It seems as if Takoma Park had been specially prepared for us, and that it has been waiting to be occupied by our institutions and their workers.--Letter 153, 1904.
In another communication she observed that "there is no saloon in the town. Not one of the members of the Town Council drinks liquor, smokes or chews tobacco, or uses profane language."--Letter 155, 1904. And then she exclaimed:
This place must now be worked. The situation here fills me with hope and courage. We know that the Lord desires us now to go forward as speedily as possible with the work before us.-- Ibid.
Ministry in the Washington Churches
Ellen White was immediately drawn into services in the Washington Adventist churches. On the first Sabbath there, the last day of April, she spoke in Elder J. S. Washburn's Memorial church (Manuscript 106, 1904). She spoke again a week later at the rededication of this church. She had planned to speak on the Sermon on the Mount, but writing of the experience, observed, "This was taken from me," and John 15:1-17,"I am the true vine," was impressed upon her mind (Manuscript 142, 1904).
The next Sabbath she spoke at the racially mixed First church on Eighth Street, pastored by Elder L. C. Sheafe, a black. Elder Sheafe also pastored an all-black church, the members of which he invited for the meeting conducted by Ellen White. With one all-black church, one all-white church, and one integrated church, there were potentials for some problems. In her ministry she endeavored to keep before the people the importance of unity.
Following the service she prepared for the return drive to Takoma Park. As "I stepped into the carriage to start home," she reports:
We were surrounded with white people and colored people so that we could not move on.... One after another introduced themselves as being formerly acquainted with me. A mother came with her two sons, very fine-looking men, and introduced them to me. Both expressed great satisfaction in listening to the discourse. The elder son grasped my hand and said, "My heart is melted within me. I never listened to such a discourse as you have given today. I never heard anything like it. It thrilled me through and through." ...
Other noble-looking men and women crowded to the carriage, but I did not get their names. The colored came as well as the white; I shook hands with them heartily, and then we had to leave.--Manuscript 45, 1904.
The trip back to Takoma Park through the grounds of the National Soldiers' Home was pleasant, and Ellen White declared that "this shall be the road I shall henceforth travel in reaching this meeting house in Washington."
As they neared Takoma Park the clouds were gathering, and the sky grew darker and darker. They reached Carroll House just in time, for "no sooner had we entered the house than the shower came on."-- Ibid.
From the day they had begun to make definite preparation for the trip to Washington, Ellen White had her eyes on the plans for the biennial session of the Lake Union Conference. This was called to meet at Berrien Springs, Michigan, from May 17 to 26. Not only would she attend the conference but she would also for the first time see the newly established Emmanuel Missionary College. This left just three weeks for the first part of her stay in Washington, and there was much to do. She wrote of the "many things to be considered in locating our printing establishment and especially our sanitarium, that everything shall be according to the light given" (Manuscript 142, 1904).
As the construction work was about to begin, committee meetings were held from day to day in the large first-floor room in the Carroll Manor House. Ellen White participated in the discussion and gave counsel.
It was hoped that the enterprises in Washington could be started without incurring large indebtedness, and it seemed that circumstances favored this. In February there had been a very destructive fire in Baltimore in which eighty square blocks of business and residential buildings were destroyed. Lumber had been shipped in by boat by various companies to meet the needs of rebuilding, and it seems that the market was oversupplied. Some of this lumber was redirected to Washington and was available at about one half its normal cost (Letter 237, 1904). The builder, Mr. Baird, was a very careful, economical man, and he was pleased to find they could secure low-cost building materials for the structures they were to erect in Takoma Park.
Except for reports of the services that she held in the churches and an occasional reference to her driving out through the town, enjoying the scenery and approving the general location, the records are rather meager for the initial three weeks Ellen White spent in Washington.
But now they had to be off to Berrien Springs, Michigan, to attend the Lake Union Conference session. This meeting held large importance. Dr. Kellogg and some of his supporters would be present. They were still in the throes of the pantheistic teachings. The Living Temple was being sold. The direction of the medical work and the control of the church's medical institutions was a subject of controversy. The session would be a crucial meeting, and Ellen White was eager to attend. It proved to be the best-attended union conference session held in 1904.