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Authority and accountability · Claim record

On 15 June 1911 The Watch Tower told its readers that a Bible Student, J. A. Bohnet, would sell “miracle wheat” seed at one dollar a pound and give the whole proceeds to the Society; a follow-up notice on 1 August 1911 reported many orders and quoted bulk prices of twenty-two pounds for twenty dollars. One dollar a pound is the sixty dollars a bushel that the charge against Russell was later put in terms of.

Claim ID claim-authority-miracle-wheat-offerConcerns 15 June 1911Explicit statement
Explicit statement · 15 June 1911 Verified

On 15 June 1911 The Watch Tower told its readers that a Bible Student, J. A. Bohnet, would sell “miracle wheat” seed at one dollar a pound and give the whole proceeds to the Society; a follow-up notice on 1 August 1911 reported many orders and quoted bulk prices of twenty-two pounds for twenty dollars. One dollar a pound is the sixty dollars a bushel that the charge against Russell was later put in terms of. The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 June 1911The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 August 19111975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1975

The organisation’s position or later explanation: The 1975 Yearbook says the seed was donated by two readers on the condition that it be sold at that price for the Society's benefit, that gross receipts were about $1,800, and that “Russell himself did not get a penny of this money”.

Show the evidence (3 sources)
Primary JW publication Verified

The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, “A Donation of Miracle Wheat”

15 June 1911 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society

“Brother Bohnet writes us that he has gradually accumulated a crop of miracle wheat from the few grains he obtained as a start. He prefers that the first opportunity for obtaining this wheat shall go to The Watch Tower readers. He will sell it for $1 per pound, including postage, and give the entire proceeds to our Society.”

A short notice in the 15 June 1911 issue, giving an address for orders and advising that “miracle wheat should be sowed one-fourth as thick as common wheat” and that “Ordinarily it should produce from ten to fifteen times as much proportionately to the amount sown.”

Scan of original

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Read in the Reprints volume for 1911. The notice falls between the issue mastheads for 15 June and 1 July 1911, and the Watch Tower of 1 August 1911 refers back to it as “The notice in The Watch Tower of June 15”. It sits on the Reprints page marked [4843], whose running head is too damaged in this scan’s OCR to be read (“(178-195)”); the nearest legible running heads are [4842] “June 15, 1911 THE WATCH TOWER (190-191)” and [4847] “(202-203)”. No magazine page number is therefore recorded here.

Scan provenance. The Internet Archive item titled “The watch tower and herald of Christ’s presence, 1911” is the Watch Tower Reprints volume for 1911: it reproduces each issue with its masthead, and every page carries a continuous Reprints page number in square brackets together with the original magazine pages in parentheses in the running head. Read in the item’s OCR text file.

Notes. One dollar a pound is sixty dollars a bushel. That is the figure the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and J. J. Ross both used, and the figure the 1975 Yearbook quotes when restating the charge.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-ctr-wt-1911-0615-miracle-wheat-donation

Primary JW publication Verified

The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, “Miracle Wheat in Demand”

1 August 1911 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society

“The notice in The Watch Tower of June 15 that Brother Bohnet has “miracle wheat” in abundance now, and that he will sell it at $1 per pound and donate the entire proceeds to our Tract Fund, has brought in many orders. These will be filled between August 15 and September 1. No limit as to supply has been noted. Sent by Express, prepaid, the price will be twenty-two pounds for $20; fifty-five pounds for $50; larger quantities at the latter rate. The merits of this wheat over the common variety have been mentioned in previous issues of The Watch Tower.”

A follow-up notice reporting demand for the seed and setting bulk prices. It appears in the issue between the mastheads for 1 August and 15 August 1911.

Scan of original

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Read in the Reprints volume for 1911. The notice falls between the issue mastheads for 1 August and 15 August 1911, on the Reprints page that ends at the marker [4866]; the running heads on either side are too damaged in this scan’s OCR to yield a magazine page number, so none is recorded.

Scan provenance. The Internet Archive item titled “The watch tower and herald of Christ’s presence, 1911” is the Watch Tower Reprints volume for 1911: it reproduces each issue with its masthead, and every page carries a continuous Reprints page number in square brackets together with the original magazine pages in parentheses in the running head. Read in the item’s OCR text file.

Corroborated by. src-ctr-wt-1911-0615-miracle-wheat-donation

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-ctr-wt-1911-0801-miracle-wheat-demand

Primary JW publication Verified

1975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, “Part 1—United States of America (“Miracle Wheat”)”

1975 · pp.70-71 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society

“his enemies have charged that he sold a great quantity of ordinary wheat seed under the name of “Miracle Wheat” at one dollar per pound, or sixty dollars per bushel. They have held that from this Russell realized an enormous personal profit. However, these charges are absolutely false. ... The wheat was received and sent out by the Society and the gross receipts from it amounted to about $1,800. Russell himself did not get a penny of this money. ... When others criticized this sale, all who had contributed were informed that if they were dissatisfied their money would be returned. In fact, the identical money received for the wheat was held for a year for that purpose. But not one person asked for a refund.”

The Yearbook's account names K. B. Stoner of Fincastle, Virginia as the grower, records the 1907 United States Department of Agriculture report that first drew Russell's attention, and says two Watch Tower readers, J. A. Bohnet and S. J. Fleming, donated about thirty bushels in 1911 on condition it be sold at a dollar a pound for the Society's benefit.

Official source

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Opened on the Watchtower Online Library; page markers 70 and 71 bracket the passage, and the organisation’s own Index 1930-1985 cites this treatment as “yb75 70-71”. The account does not mention the Brooklyn Daily Eagle trial, the jury’s verdict against Russell, the 1915 appeal, or the government seed tests put in evidence at that trial; a full-text search of the Watchtower Online Library returns no occurrence of “Brooklyn Daily Eagle” anywhere in this Yearbook.

Corroborated by. src-ctr-ad-1915-0507-russell-v-eagle

Notes. The Yearbook says the donors gave “about thirty bushels”; Russell’s own account in The Watch Tower of 15 February 1913 says “the total amount being twenty bushels”. The discrepancy is on the record and neither figure should be published as settled.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-ctr-yb-1975-p70-miracle-wheat

Claim page

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