Big Book Dave - Archivist Interior Alaska
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September 2003
Interior Alaska
Report

September 1868: James B. Bonsetta was born. He became a Southern Pacific Railroad detective. After his wife Sara found the body of a man frozen to death in their backyard - winter of 1907, he and Sara, opened their home in South Bend, Indiana to alcoholics who had nowhere else to go. A newspaper article brought business and church people together donating money and food to the Bonsetta Family. The success of this allowed them to open the "Bonsetta Home for Inebriates" in 1909, which was a successful operation for many years years until James passed away in 1933, two years before our co-founders would meet for the first time...
 

Interesting September Dates

  
 
1874 -September
Dr. Henry A. Reynolds forms the first of what would become many U.S. clubs, "Red Ribbon Reform Clubs against Alcoholism," in Salem Mass.
  1892 - September
William Silkworth enters the Medical College of New Jersey for his medical degree. This college changed its name to Princeton University.
  1894 - September
Bill Wilson's parents are married at the Congregational Church in East Dorset, Vermont. Gilman Barrows Wilson and Emily Griffith.
 
1904 - September
Samuel Adams brings the first in a series of articles in Colliers Magazine exposing the alcohol industry - What it was doing to families and its huge profits.
 
1909 - September
The American Society for the Study of Alcoholism" erected a monument in honor of Dr. J. E. Turner in Wilton, Ohio. Dr. Turner founded one of the first known inebriate asylums where alcoholics were placed in straitjackets and treated in the same way as the chronically insane.
 
1914 - September
Bill Wilson meets his future wife, Lois Burnham, daughter of Dr. Clark Burnham, a well know and highly respected New York Physician.
  1915 - September
Bill and Lois are engaged at Emerald Lake in Vermont where her family had a summer cottage.
 
1933 - September 19th
Alaskans heaved a collective sigh of relief when the Territorial Legislature passed "The Beer Act," which marked the end of prohibition in Alaska!
 
1937 - September
The belief that alcoholics are resistant to the Oxford Groups Four Absolutes develops in Bill's mind and in his actions as he begins the break away from the Oxford Group.
  1939 - September
Mary M. discharged from Bluthewood Sanitarium-Connecticut. Fiche had five months of sobriety. Bill Wilson is her sponsor and she's going to A. A. Meetings in New York City.
  1946 - September

the first A.A. meeting in Mexico is established. Mexico City.
  1971 -September
Over 500 members attend the first European Convention of A. A. held in Bristol England.
  1973 -September
Our 'Archives Dept.' is established in the General Service office in New York.
 
Big Book Dave
Elected Archivist - Interior Alaska
24-Hour Number
(907) 456-7501