Charles Taze Russell was born to Scottish-Irish parents, immigrant Joseph Lytel Russell  (d. December 17, 1897) and Ann Eliza Birney (d. January 25, 1861), on February 16, 1852 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Russell was the second of five children, of whom two survived into adulthood. His mother died when he was 9 years old. The Russells lived for a time in Philadelphia before moving to Pittsburgh, where they became members of the Presbyterian Church.

When 1878 arrived, failure of the expected rapture brought great disappointment for Barbour and Russell, and their associates and readers. But one of Russell's associates, A.H. Macmillan, claimed that Russell was not upset.  While talking with Russell about the events of 1878, I told him that Pittsburgh papers had reported he was on the Sixth Street bridge dressed in a white robe on the night of the Memorial of Christ's death, expecting to be taken to heaven together with many others. I asked him, "Is that correct?" Russell laughed heartily and said: "I was in bed that night between 10:30 and 11:00 P.M. However, some of the more radical ones might have been there, but I was not. Neither did I expect to be taken to heaven at that time, for I felt there was much work to be done preaching the Kingdom message to the peoples of the earth before the church would be taken away.  Confused by what was perceived to be an error in calculation, Russell re-examined the doctrine to see if he could determine whether it had biblical origins or was simply Christian tradition. He concluded that the doctrine was Christian tradition. Through the pages of the Herald, he wrote about what he had concluded on the subject. Barbour, embarrassed by the failure of their expectations, rejected Russell's explanation. They conducted a debate in successive issues of the journal from early 1878 to mid-1879. In a matter of months, Barbour changed some of the views which he and Russell had previously shared, and no longer relied on prophetic chronology. They began to debate over the issue of 'Christ's ransom,' and the two eventually separated because of their disagreements.  Russell withdrew his financial support and started his own journal, Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, publishing his first issue in July 1879. Barbour formed The Church of the Strangers that same year, continuing to publish Herald of the Morning.

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