Husband Rev. William Ross Covert 1 2 3
AKA: W. R. Coovert 4
Born: 17 Dec 1853 - Fayetteville, Lawrence Co, PA 1
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Father: Joseph Covert (1818- ) 3
Mother: Sophia Ross (1828-1864) 1
Marriage: 1 Jan 1889 or 1899 2 5
Wife Sarah Ida Stoner 2 5
Born: 18 Mar 1862 2
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Father: Daniel B. Stoner (1829-1896) 2 5
Mother: Sarah Loucks (1834- ) 2
Children
1 M Ross Covert 2
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General Notes: Husband - Rev. William Ross Covert
He was reared in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, attended the public schools and was a student several terms in the Edinboro State Normal school. In 1872 he migrated to Wappello, Iowa, was ordained a minister of the gospel at Harmony, Iowa, in October, 1874, and assigned a charge. In 1876 he removed to Monmouth, Illinois, thence to Warrensburg, same state, where owing to illness he was obliged to relinquish his studies at Lincoln University as well as his pastoral charge. He then returned to his father's home in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, where he remained recruiting his health for a year, after which he was sent as general missionary to Crete, Nebraska. In 1878 he was appointed pastor of a church at Decatur, Illinois; returned in a year to Mercer County and opened a mission at Clark Mills, preaching there for two years and at the same time attending Grove City college. He was then sent to Pittsburgh as pastor of the Townsend street church where he remained five years, attaining quite a reputation, his sermons being frequently printed in the Commercial Gazette. In 1886 he became pastor of the church of God at Stoners, where he received more than ninety persons into the church fellowship which then numbered more than two hundred and forty members. In all his charges he was popular with the people. He was a very active member of the Prohibition party and was chairman of the State convention at Harrisburg in 1889. He was a prominent member and lecturer of the Jr. O. U. A. M. At the reunion of the Covert family to be held in 1890 he was to be historian.
Rev. W. R. Covert has won an enviable reputation as a public debater, especially in representing the church of God, in discussions with Rev. Clark Braden, of the Disciple church and W. E. Kelley, the apostle of the Latter Day Saints. In his great debate in Philadelphia in 1885 against Spiritualism he publicly affirmed that every medium was either a dupe, a liar, a fraud or a knave; and he offered five hundred dollars to any medium who could perform any of so-called spiritual manifestations which he could not duplicate or explain and demonstrate to be a fraud. While hundreds of Spiritualists, including many noted mediums, were present none of them would accept his offer. Rev. Covert did not denounce honest Spiritualists as he believed them to be deluded-but the medium who knowingly deludes the people.
As a scientist Rev. William R. Covert gained considerable reputation. He was as-sociated for several years with Prof. J. Stanley Grimes, of Chicago, and wrote the introduction to "Geonomy," the crowning work of this great scientist which was published by J. B. Lippincott & Co. In the introduction Rev. Covert endorsed the beautiful and original theory: That the growth of the world's gravitation is due to a single cause, the condensation of ether and that electricity, heat and light are motions of ether, or stated more generally, that every particle of matter is continually assimilating and condensing ether, at the same time setting free its latent heat which produces vacua, which the surrounding ether moves in to fill and the move-ment thus produced is the immediate cause of gravitation. That the internal heat and light of suns and planets and our earth are due to a single cause, the condensation of ether. That the latent heat is set free in the earth by the conden-sation of ether not having an opportunity to radiate or escape as fast as set free, produces the internal heat in the earth and the expansion caused by heat and chemical combinations with the sinking of the ocean beds produces earth-quakes and volcanoes. The light and heat of the sun is founded upon the principle that "the larger a globe is the less is the area of its sur-face in proportion to its magnitude," and, there-fore, the more concentrated and intense must be its radiation. That the radiations of the sun, which contains all but a mere fraction (1-700 part) of the matter of the solar system, are so intense that its surface becomes luminous. If the sun were broken into small globes like our earth it would soon cease to be self-luminous. Another new and original theory is "our continents were created by the agency of the ocean currents." The cause of the ocean currents is gravitation, heat, cold, rotation of the earth and inertia active and passive. And that before there was any "dry land" there was three pairs of elliptical ocean currents that collected sediment on the ocean's bed which originally produced three pairs of sinking basins which forced the plastic strata from beneath them and caused it to raise the earth's crust in the inter-oceanic spaces and thus creating originally three pairs of continents, North and South America, Europe and South Africa, and Asia and Australia."
Rev. Covert's theory is: this would of necessity cause the land to rise around the poles or at the north first, which would shut out the warm water or the ocean currents from the poles and thus produced the "Glacial Epoch" in which mighty glaciers advanced from the north in not only the "tertiary age" but also in the "car-boniferous" or "coal age" sinking the earth's surface and carrying sediment, rock, gravel and sand and spreading it over the low lands further south, and thus covering up the accumulation of the luxuriant vegetation of ages and sinking them below the ocean's surface; and thus the pressure and heat set free by the condensation of ether with chemical union or combination formed the coal beds, the process would be repeated as the earth's surface would slowly rise again after the glaciers would melt; and thus we find coal beds that grew on the earth's surface with sea-rock formed over them and this covered with sand, gravel, etc., and this repeated several times, as there are different beds of coal one above the other with ocean-formed rock between them, showing there has been several Glacial Epochs or risings and sinkings of the continents.
In mental science Rev. Covert is quite an expert having been called in insanity cases. He has not only adopted Prof. Grimes' science of the mind, but carried it beyond the point left by his preceptor, the discoverer of this new science, who was himself a student of Spurzheim, one of the founders of the science of phrenology.
Briefly stated, Rev. Covert's theory is that the seat of consciousness is located in the upper part of the medulla oblongata as located by Prof. Grimes in 1838; that the mind is a unit but has faculties, and that each faculty of the mind has a corresponding organ in the brain and nervous system, and as in proportion as the brain and nervous system is perfect the natural phenomena of the mind is perfect. It is not the eye that sees or the ears that hear, but the mind sees and hears through these organs and in proportion as these organs are perfect the phenomena of the mind, i. e. sight and hearing, are perfect and so with every other faculty. Hence if all men's brains were exactly alike all men would be equally alike mentally. The reason men naturally differ in mental phenomena, such as mathematics, music, poetry, language, mechanism, etc., is because the organs of the brain are not all equally developed. The mental faculties are divided in two grand divisions-the "Intellect-uals" and "Propensities;" the intellectuals are divided into the perceptives and reflectives; the propensities into the "Ipseal" and "Social." The Ipseal into the "Corporal," "Belligerent," "Prudential," "Industrial" and "Improving." The social into the "Domestic," "Governing" and "Conforming." Monomania is caused by one faculty being diseased or affected. Emotional insanity is caused by the propensities being disordered. Idiocy is caused by the intellectual organs of the brain being deformed, destroyed or diseased; as a person may be blind and yet hear, so a person may be monomania or emotional insane and not intellectual insane, because the faculties of the mind are not a unit. Mesmerism is a species of sleep produced by the undue excitement of the conforming organs. Those who are subject to it can be mesmerized and can be healed of certain diseases by faith. The will de jure is a resultant or decision of all the mental propensities. The will de facto is one faculty or propensity running the mental congress. [BHCWC, 575]