Creative History

Everyone who was anyone among the social and political elite of Washington D.C. was there on that fateful day in February of 1844.  On that day nearly five-hundred ladies and gentlemen attired in gowns and tuxedos with top hats and white gloves to match pulled up to the Washington Naval Yard on the shores of the Potomac River in their luxurious horse drawn carriages.  Each of them eagerly awaited the spectacle that had been promised them. All of these well dressed ladies and gentlemen were at the Washington Naval Yard on this overcast, cold and dreary February day at the personal invitation of one man.  That man was a prominent American Naval officer and member of one of New Jersey’s most affluent and influential historical families, Captain Robert F. Stockton.  Captain Stockton’s reputation was so solid and his family so well known that no one in the nation’s capital could possibly refuse his invitation. The assembled guests attired in their finery walked up the...

  Rural New York farmer and part-time Baptist preacher William Miller announced in October of 1831 that the end of the world was near. And he gave a specific date for when the world would end with the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.  This Second Advent, as he termed it, would occur on October 22, 1844. Miller based his claims, so he asserted, on careful study of the Bible, specifically the Old Testament.  He used one passage in particular Daniel 8:14, “And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” KJV In Miller’s Biblical interpretation the “sanctuary” represented the planet earth, while the number 2,300 referenced in the Book of Daniel as days was meant to symbolically represent years instead. As justification for this personal interpretation of scripture Miller pointed to two passages from the Old Testament, Ezekiel 4:6 which states, “And when thou hast accomplished them lie again on thy right side ...