| 541 reported a numerical strength of seven hundred and fifty. This conference, on the 9th, appointed George W. Gee, church recorder for the Iowa churches.
Some items of interest we will here present in the words of Joseph Smith:-
"Tuesday, 10th. I spent the day in council with B. Young, H. C. Kimball, J. Taylor, O. Pratt, and George A. Smith, and appointed a special conference for the 16th instant, and directed them to send missionaries to New Orleans; Charleston, South Carolina; Salem, Massachusetts; Baltimore, Maryland; and Washington, District of Columbia; and also requested the Twelve to take the burthen of the business of the church in Nauvoo, and especially as pertaining to the selling of church lands.
"The department of English literature and mathematics of the University of the City of Nauvoo, is in operation under the tuition of Professor Orson Pratt . . .
"Letters from various parts of England and Scotland show that numbers are daily added to the church; while shipwrecks, floods, houses and workshops falling, great and destructive fires, sudden deaths, banks breaking, men's hearts failing them for fear, because no man buyeth their merchandise, shopkeepers and manufacturers failing, and many accidents on the railways, betoken the coming of the Son of Man.
"Thursday, 12th. A considerable number of the Sac and Fox Indians have been for several days encamped in the neighborhood of Montrose. The ferryman this morning brought over a great number on the ferryboat and two flatboats, for the purpose of visiting me. The military band and a detachment of Invincibles were on shore ready to receive and escort them to the grove, but they refused to come on shore until I went down. I accordingly went down, and met 'Keokuk,' 'Kiskukosh,' 'Appanoose,' and about one hundred chiefs and braves of those tribes, with their families, at the landing, introduced my brother Hyrum to them, and after the usual salutations, conducted them to the meeting ground in the grove, and
(page 541) |
