up the 144,000 would join Christ as a "joint heir" and assistant mediator during the millennium. On October 24, 1909, former Watch Tower Society secretary-treasurer Ernest C. Henninges, who was by then the Australian branch manager based in Melbourne, wrote Russell an open letter of protest trying to persuade him to abandon the teaching, and calling on Bible Students to examine its legitimacy. When Russell refused, Henninges and most of the Melbourne congregation left Russell's movement to form the New Covenant Fellowship. Hundreds of the estimated 10,000 US Bible Students also left, including pilgrim Matthew L. McPhail, a member of the Chicago Bible Students, and A. E. Williamson of Brooklyn, forming the New Covenant Believers. The group, which informally referred to members as Free Bible Students, published The Kingdom Scribe magazine until 1975. The group is currently known as the Berean Bible Students Church, with fewer than 200 members. Leadership dispute and aftermath Russell died on October 31, 1916, in Pampa, Texas during a cross-country preaching trip. On January 6, 1917, board member and society legal counsel Joseph Franklin Rutherford was elected president of the Watch Tower Society, unopposed, at the Pittsburgh convention. Rutherford then announced publication of The Finished Mystery, which he claimed was a posthumous volume of Russell's Studies in the Scriptures. By-laws passed by both the Pittsburgh convention and the board of directors stated that the president would be the executive officer and general manager of the society, giving him full control of its affairs worldwide. By June, four of the seven Watch Tower Society directors—Robert H. Hirsh, Alfred I. Ritchie, Isaac F. Hoskins and James D. Wright—had decided they had erred in endorsing Rutherford's expanded powers of management, claiming Rutherford had become autocratic. In June Hirsh attempted to rescind the new by-laws and to reclaim the powers of management from the president, but Rutherford later claimed he had by then detected a conspiracy among the directors to seize control of the society. In July, Rutherford gained a legal opinion from a Philadelphia corporation lawyer that the four were not legally directors of the society. On July 12, Rutherford filled what he claimed were four vacancies on the board, appointing Alexander H. Macmillan and Pennsylvania Bible Students W. E. Spill, John A. Bohnet and George H. Fisher as directors. Between August and November the society and the four ousted directors published a series of pamphlets, with each