George Gruen

George Gruen and his wife Freda L. Malan Gruen were associated with the exclusive brethren in Illinois and Kansas.

Family

George was born on Nov. 29th, 1874 in Saline township, Madison County, Illinois, which is today part of metropolitan St. Louis. Saline Township includes most of Grantfork, parts of Pierron, and the northern part of Highland, the latter of which is the origin of several exclusive brethren assemblies, of which there is no present meeting. However, one of the Highland meetings, a Grant meeting, merged with the Booth brethren, then in the 1940's with the Ames brethren, and there is a continued Ames meeting in nearby Edwardsville, in the same county. More related history to be found at Highland Meeting Room, IL.

George's parents were John and Elizabeth Lembach Gruen.

Later Years

George's later years were spent in an area of Erie, Pennsylvania known as Harborcreek. He died at the age of 82 on Dec. 16, 1956 at the Heaster Convalescent Home in Conneautville, Crawford, Pennsylvania, where he resided the final six months of his life.

Frank B. Tompkinson

George's death was reported by Frank Benjamin Tompkinson (1890-1978), also of Harborcreek at the time. Frank was in leadership with the Erie Bible Truth Depot, now known as [Believers Bookshelf https://www.bbusa.org/] and located in Sunbury, PA.

Frank was born in Newport, Shropshire, England, and is one of several brethren who helped orchestrate a peaceful correspondence in 1921 between leadership of Grant meetings in America and Glanton brethren in Great Britain, after the Grants and a remaining dozen Glanton meetings in the U.S. had merged by 1911, becoming Booth-Grant brethren, according to W.R. Dronsfield's "The Brethren Since 1870". Frank was later instrumental assisting in a merger between the Kelly and Mory brethren in 1970, serving with the Kelly, or "Reunited" brethren (that include many of the former exclusive groups mentioned, with exception of some of the Booth-Grant brethren that are presently known to historians as Ames brethren).

Sources

• Madison County wiki
• Ancestry.com
• The Brethren Since 1870 and other Papers by W.R. Dronsfield. p. 32.