LUNT, Noah Norton (1821-1902) and (first wife) Rebecca E. (c. 1828-1851) and (second wife) Sarah H. (1833-1868) and (third wife) Frances (1830-after 1910)

Noah Lunt, a carpenter from Maine, was an active layperson, first as a Millerite Adventist, later as a Seventh-day Adventist. According to J. N. Loughborough's obituary of Noah Lunt, he was “arrested and put in prison for preaching the [Millerite] message.” Support for this claim is found in William Lapham's History of Paris, Maine … , published in 1884: “Noah Lunt was arrested and taken before Judge Cole, Apr. 2 [1845] charged with disturbing the peace by calling at persons’ houses in the night time and preaching that ‘the church and the world were rejected of God.’”1EGWLM 866.2

Loughborough also recorded that Noah Lunt was among a group of 60 persons in Portland, Maine, who in January 1845 heard Ellen White relate the vision she had received the month before, and that he began to keep the Sabbath in 1846. Until about 1865 he worshipped with Sabbathkeepers in Portland, then lived in Battle Creek, Michigan, for many years before finally settling in Oakland, California, in the early 1880s. In all three places he served as church elder. Ellen White appears to have appreciated his qualities as a preacher, for in 1890 she suggested to O. A. Olsen, then General Conference president, that Noah Lunt, together with J. N. Loughborough, “come to Michigan and work in this state,” a suggestion that was never implemented.1EGWLM 866.3

Noah Lunt's first two wives, Rebecca and Sarah Chamberlain, were sisters, and both died young. His third wife, Frances Howland, was the daughter of Stockbridge and Louisa Howland. In her autobiographical writings Ellen White called Frances Howland “a very dear friend of mine” and recalled the occasion in 1845 when Frances was dramatically healed of rheumatic fever after prayer by Ellen and others. It was also Frances Howland who later had the main care of the Whites’ infant son, Henry, during the five years that he spent with the Howland family.1EGWLM 866.4

See: Obituary: “Noah Norton Lunt,” Review, Jan. 28, 1902, p. 63; obituary: “Sarah Lunt,” Review, June 2, 1868, p. 382; Thomas S. Lunt, Lunt. A History of the Lunt Family in America (Salem, Mass.: Salem Press Co., 1914), p. 186; William Berry Lapham, History of Paris, Maine, p. 171; 1900 U.S. Federal Census, “Frances H. Lunt,” California, Alameda County, Oakland City, p. 8A; James White, “Eastern Tour,” Review, Nov. 1, 1853, p. 133; Ellen G. White, Lt 20, 1890 (Oct. 7); James White and Ellen G. White, Life Sketches (1880), p. 199.1EGWLM 866.5