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Show Page 58 Sailing from Toronto in June, Orson left this angry but fruitful mission field for Oswego, New York. The evening passage found him once again in Jefferson County on an errand colored by a year-long correspondence with Miss Sarah Marinda Bates of Henderson. Upon his arrival at the Bates home, he was "very much enjoyed" to see them. He became engaged - he writes under date of June 6, 1836, "I had previously formed an acquaintance with their daughter with whom I had held a correspondence by letter and with whom I shortly expected to enter into the sacred bonds of matrimony." His engagement did not prevent him from continuing his mission. He found Elder Luke Johnson, another young member of the Twelve, at the Bates household, and together they began laboring "with their mights, for the 21 cause of God." In fact, the wedding, when it occurred, seemed almost incidental to the events of that momentous Fourth of July, 1836. Independence Day dawned with a baptism. Orson officiated for seven new members, some of whom, as Orson writes, were invited to "a wedding at Brother Bates'." Those baptized included the two brothers and sister-in-law of Sally Bates, and the entire family grouped for the afternoon ceremony which linked her with the apostle. Elder Luke S. Johnson performed the wedding, which had to be short and simple - there was still a confirmation that evening to be attended to, and Orson laid hands on tihe new members himself. He tarried with his bride only three days, and was off again with Johnson toward the villages of Jericho, LeRayville and Antwerp, New York - where a predominantly Quaker settlement met him with a quiet audience of two. He declined to preach. Remaining in Jefferson County as a missionary until October, he took every opportunity to expound his developing doctrine of history, that the religious establishments were equivalent to the spiritual Babylon evoked in the Apocalypse. In September he wrote to the |
