Haines (later Pearson), Elizabeth (Mills) (1801–1879)

Elizabeth Haines was an early Adventist at whose house on Danforth Street, in Portland, Maine, Ellen White received her first vision as well as several others.¹

Born in Limerick, Maine, on April 20, 1801, Elizabeth Mills married Richard Libby on July 8, 1819 in Scarborough, Maine, a coastal town about seven miles south of Portland where the couple made their home. They had five children before Richard died in 1833.² These were Horace, Keziah, Olivia, Sarah Jane, and Richard, Jr. Horace and Olivia both died at age 19. On April 19, 1834, Elizabeth married Benjamin Haines, originally from Saco, Maine.³ They had three sons together: John B. Haines, Jacob Mills Haines, and Horace Haines. Only the oldest lived into adulthood.

Elizabeth’s parents and three of her brothers moved to Portland, Maine, in December 1828. After her father, Jacob Mills, died in 1843, Elizabeth Libby, along with her husband and children, moved to Portland as well.⁴ With her sister Orinda Haines and her brother Jacob Mills, Jr., she attended the third session of the General Conference of Second Advent believers at the Casco Street Christian Church, October 12-14, 1841.⁵

When Ellen Harmon had her first vision in December 1844, Elizabeth Haines was giving Ellen’s mother, Eunice Harmon, needed relief in caring for her Ellen, who had been diagnosed by physicians as suffering from tuberculosis.⁶ Five women were gathered at Elizabeth’s house that morning for prayer. One after another they prayed, and then fragile Ellen, who had “frequent spells of coughing and hemorrhages from the lungs,” which “had greatly reduced her physical strength,” began praying in a whisper of a voice. Then her words stopped, and she lost awareness of her surroundings. In her vision she saw the Adventist believers on an elevated pathway walking to glory with the light of the “midnight cry” behind them and Jesus, as their guide, before them.⁷ During the vision, she ceased breathing, and the women with her thought that she was dead. When she finally regained consciousness and her sight, she asked where she was. Elizabeth responded, “You are right here in my house.”⁸

Ellen returned to her parent’s house to spend the night but left in a sleigh in the morning to avoid sharing the vision at the meeting to be held at the house that night. At Haines’ house, Ellen ran into Joseph Turner, a Millerite preacher and editor who was prominent in Maine. He asked how she was and if she was doing what she was supposed to be doing. She did not answer, because she knew that she was not. She then went up into the upstairs “chamber,” and, about two hours later, Turner went up to her room and expressed interest in hearing her vision. Fearing he would reject it, she would not share it and then wrestled the rest of the day with her duty until she promised God that she would share the vision if He gave her strength to ride home that night. She was strengthened but arrived home after the meeting was over. Turner called at her house the next morning, and she shared the vision with him. When he accepted it, she was encouraged and shared it with the other Adventists at the next meeting.⁹

The second vision, which Ellen received a week later while in the upstairs “chamber” at Elizabeth Haines’ house, was instruction to take the message of the first vision to the scattered groups of Adventists. Shy and ill, Ellen was troubled by this instruction but finally came to accept it.¹⁰

When she returned from a tour of several towns in Maine and New Hampshire, Ellen went again to Elizabeth Haines’ house. She was scheduled to relate what she had been shown in new visions about the wounding of God’s cause by the deception and fanaticism of John Howell and Joseph Turner. There she received another vision, in Turner’s presence, in which she “was again shown his ungodly course.”¹¹

Come spring 1845, she had another vision in Elizabeth Haines’ home. It was her vision about the new earth, which inspired William H. Hyde, after he heard her present what she had seen, to write a poem about “The Better Land.”¹² The poem has become the hymn “We Have Heard,” which is number 453 in The Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal.

Following this vision, Ellen Harmon suffered two weeks of extreme sickness accompanied by mental confusion.¹³ Joseph Turner made use of comments she made in her delirium to discredit her visions, coercing Elizabeth Haines, who was present during Ellen’s sickness and was then sick herself, to sign a statement against her. Elizabeth later told Ellen that she regretted ever signing it.¹⁴

In Ellen White’s support, Elizabeth Haines and her brother Jacob Mills, Jr., signed a statement with other witnesses, on August 10, 1858, testifying that James and Ellen White had not participated in the fanatical practices of some of the other early Adventists.¹⁵ Then, during the week ending on Sabbath November 20, J. N. Loughborough visited Portland with the Whites and was able to converse with Sister Haines.¹⁶ The year had been particularly hard for her. Her husband had died of congestion of the lungs in April, and her youngest son had died of consumption just two weeks before. She remained in Portland.

Six years later, Elizabeth married John Pearson. Pearson was a noted early leader of Adventism in Portland, now living in Massachusetts, who was known for his son’s preaching with James White in 1843 and for his witnessing of a vision of Ellen’s at the house of her parents in 1845. Two of Elizabeth’s children were already married to two of John Pearson’s children.

Elizabeth and John Pearson shared 14 years of married life in Newburyport, Massachusetts, until John died at the age of 90 on December 24, 1878.¹⁷ Elizabeth Mills (Haines) Pearson, whom Ellen White remembered as “a dear sister in Christ, whose heart was knit with mine,” died two months later on February 28, 1879, at age 77.¹⁸

Sources

Burt, Merlin. Adventist Pioneer Places: New York and New England. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2011.

“Elizabeth Mills.” FamilySearch, accessed April 28, 2021, https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/KP42-MKD.

Loughborough, J. N. The Great Second Advent Movement: Its Rise and Progress. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1905. Adventist Pioneer Library, https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/1140/info.

Loughborough, J. N. “Sketches from the Past—No. 112.” Pacific Union Recorder, February 23, 1911.

“The Report of the Proceedings.” Signs of the Times, and Expositor of Prophecy, November 1, 1841.

White, E. G. Letter to Joseph Bates. July 13, 1847, Letter 3, 1847. Ellen G. White Writings, https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/13961.2815001#2815001.

White, E. G. “Early Experiences of Meeting Fanaticism in Maine.” Manuscript 9, 1859. Ellen G. White Writings, https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/13961.2884001#2884001.

White, E. G. “Faith, Patience, and Hope.” February 25, 1894. Manuscript 16, 1894. Ellen G. White Writings, https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/14059.6010001#6010004.

White, E. G. Spiritual Gifts, vol. 2. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1860. Ellen G. White Writings, https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/105/info

White, E. G. “Notes of Travel.” ARH, November 25, 1884.

Notes

1. For more detail on Elizabeth Haines, her home, its significance for Ellen White, and how this information was uncovered, see “The Hunt for Elizabeth Haines’ House,” in Related Content. The home and its residents identified in: “Haines Benj. Laborer, h 111 danforth,” Portland, Maine, City Directory, 1846, accessed March 23, 2021, https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/15386390?pId=985309079.↩

2. “Elizabeth Mills,” FamilySearch, accessed April 28, 2021, https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/KP42-MKD.↩

3. Jeffersonian (Portland, Maine), May 12, 1834, 3.↩

4. Dec. 20, 1828, Cumberland County Book 114, 461, accessed March 23, 2021, https://i2a.uslandrecords.com/ME/Cumberland/D/Default.aspx; “Haines Benjamin, brickmaker, h danforth n vaughan,” Portland, Maine, City Directory, 1844, accessed March 23, 2021, https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/13680466?pId=832868353.↩

5. “The Report of the Proceedings,” in Signs of the Times, and Expositor of Prophecy, November 1, 1841, 113.↩

6. Merlin Burt, Adventist Pioneer Places: New York and New England (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2011), 31.↩

7. J. N. Loughborough, The Great Second Advent Movement (1905), 202. For Ellen White’s account of her vision, see A Word to the Little Flock (1847), Ellen G. White Writings, https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/1445.35#35.↩

8. E. G. White, “Faith, Patience, and Hope,” February 25, 1894, Manuscript 16, 1894, Ellen G. White Writings, https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/14059.6010001#6010004.↩

9. E. G. White to Joseph Bates, July 13, 1847, Letter 3, 1847, Ellen G. White Writings, https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/13961.2815001#2815001.↩

10. Loughborough believed the second vision was at her parents’ home (The Great Second Advent Movement, 211). Nonetheless, in her account in 1884, Ellen White refers to passing a night in anguish, which suggests that the second vision was given where she had her first vision; see E. G. White, “Notes of Travel,” ARH, November 25, 1884, 1; see also White to Bates, July 13, 1847, par. 3.↩

11. E. G. White, Spiritual Gifts, vol. 2 (Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1860), 49, Ellen G. White Writings, https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/105/info.↩

12. White, Spiritual Gifts, vol. 2, 55-56.↩

13. E. G. White, “Early Experiences of Meeting Fanaticism in Maine,” Manuscript 9, 1859, Ellen G. White Writings, https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/13961.2884001#2884001.↩

14. White, Spiritual Gifts, vol. 2, 69.↩

15. Ibid., 302.↩

16. J. N. Loughborough, “Sketches from the Past—No. 112,” Pacific Union Recorder, February 23, 1911, 1; E.C. Stiles, in ARH, December 2, 1858, 15.↩

17. “Massachusetts Deaths, 1841-1915, 1921-1924,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N7YD-7PG: 2 March 2021), John Pearson, 24 Dec 1878; citing Newburyport, Essex, Massachusetts, v 301 p 251, State Archives, Boston; FHL microfilm 960,214.↩

18. E. G. White, Life Sketches of Ellen G. White (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press, 1915), 64, Ellen G. White Writings, https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/41/info; “Massachusetts Deaths, 1841-1915, 1921-1924,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N72V-G99 : 2 March 2021), Elizabeth Mills Pearson, 28 Feb 1879; citing Newburyport, Essex, Massachusetts, v 310 p 250, State Archives, Boston; FHL microfilm 960,216.↩