The Camp Layout

After about a week in Battle Creek the Whites returned to Greenville to get ready for the camp meeting at Wright (Ibid., August 25, 1868). As the people began to assemble for the meeting on Tuesday, September 1, they found the site to be in a beautiful grove on the Root farm. Meetings were to be held in a natural amphitheater, the ground gently sloping to the speaker's stand. Two 60-foot (18-meter) tents had been erected, one well supplied with good clean straw with which to fill their bed ticks, and in which some of the men could sleep. Water came from a spring on the nearby crest of the incline, which furnished water for the livestock on the Root farm.WV 145.4

As the wagons drove up, family and church tents were unloaded and pitched in a circle around the speaker's stand—22 in all. Many of these were quite large—sleeping quarters were divided off by blankets or quilts, providing shelter for several families. Nineteen tents were from Michigan, one from New York State, and two from Wisconsin (Ibid., September 15, 1868). There would have been more had there been more time between the announcement and the opening of the meeting.WV 145.5

The first brief meeting was held Tuesday morning at 11:00, but it was limited to a season of prayer. The rest of the day was given to pitching tents and getting settled. Cooking was done on small open fires. The meeting area in front of the stand was seated with planks on logs. Close by was a bookstand well supplied with the products of the SDA Publishing House: Spiritual Gifts,, Volumes I-IV; Testimony pamphlets; Life Incidents; How to Live; Thoughts on Revelation; and the newly issued Uriah Smith book—The Visions of Mrs. E. G. White, et cetera. There also were many, many pamphlets. The youthful John Corliss tended the bookstand, with 14-year-old Willie White assisting.WV 145.6