1975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, “Part 1—United States of America”
“Without notice, she separated from him in 1897, after nearly eighteen years of marriage. ... In June 1903 Mrs. Russell filed in the Court of Common Pleas at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a suit for legal separation. During April 1906 the case came up for trial before Justice Collier and a jury. Nearly two years later, on March 4, 1908, a decree was issued that was styled “In Divorce.” The language of the decree is: “It is now ordered, adjudged and decreed that Maria F. Russell, the Libellant; and Charles T. Russell, the Respondent, be separated from bed and board.” ... This was a legalized separation and there never was an absolute divorce, as some erroneously have held.”
The Society's fullest published account of the marriage. It also quotes Russell's own answer given at Dublin in 1911: “I am not divorced from my wife. The decree of the court was not divorce, but separation, granted by a sympathetic jury, which declared that we would both be happier separated. My wife's charge was cruelty, but the only cruelty put in evidence was my refusal on one occasion to give her a kiss when she had requested it.”
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Provenance and verification note for 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, Part 1—United States of America
Confidence note. Opened on the Watchtower Online Library; the page markers 67 and 68 bracket the passage and the document’s citation code is yb75 pp. 34-109. The Yearbook is correct that no absolute divorce was granted, and it is the source of the decree’s own wording. Its characterisation of the evidence differs materially from the Superior Court’s description of that evidence.
Corroborated by. src-ctr-pasuper-1908-1019-russell-v-russell
Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-ctr-yb-1975-p67-separation