LAMSON, Joseph Bradley (c. 1829-1870) and Drusilla (c. 1831-1919)

J. B. Lamson, farmer and active layman from the Rochester, New York, area, was elected treasurer of the New York Conference when it was first organized in 1862. Drusilla (née Orton) was widowed at 39 when her husband died in 1870 of “quick consumption and typhoid fever.” Her father, Jonathan T. Orton, had been murdered just four years earlier, in 1866.1EGWLM 858.1

In the late 1870s Drusilla Lamson was employed at Battle Creek Sanitarium as matron. Ellen White's Testimony for the Physicians and Helpers of the Sanitarium pointed to several weaknesses in her work. In particular, she had failed to uphold “the distinct and separate character” of the sanitarium.1EGWLM 858.2

In 1893 Drusilla Lamson wrote to J. N. Loughborough, giving her eyewitness testimony confirming Ellen White's vision experiences. Nevertheless, Dudley M. Canright claimed that “Mrs. Lamson and Miss Fellows, both matrons of the sanitarium, lost faith in the doctrine.” This may explain why Drusilla Lamson's obituary does not appear in the Review at her death in 1919.1EGWLM 858.3

See: Obituary, “J. B. Lamson,” Review, Feb. 15, 1870, p. 71; SDAE, s.v. “New York Conference”; Ellen G. White, Testimony for the Physicians and Helpers of the Sanitarium (n.p., c. 1879), pp. 7, 8, 77, 78, 91; J. N. Loughborough, The Great Second Advent Movement, p. 208; D. M. Canright, Seventh-Day Adventism Renounced, p. 64.1EGWLM 858.4