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Show Page 138 exploration and surveying for the new settlements. In September he submitted plats for a new city, called Winter Quarters, along with architectural drawings of a tabernacle for a meeting place. Orson read the mail and delivered it every day, helped approve a plan for the records and histories, and gathered the police tax - an important item of business, due to the "devils," i.e. "rebellious wicked ungovernable men who are breeding a continual disturbance and exciting others to discontent." Public works grew, as homes for thousands had to be built - seven hundred had been completed by December - and work started on a grist mill and a council house. And always, between sodding the roofs of neighbors and issuing checks, Orson continued his observations, "study- 18 ing the polarization of light." As the year ended under a light snow in this transplanted Nauvoo, Orson and the others began to plan the "removal in the Spring." Brigham Young gave the word; and advance parties, three companies in all, would proceed to the Great Basin as soon as practicable for the laying in of crops. Orson Pratt and Wilford Woodruff were appointed captains of companies on January 14, and the same day the Twelve issued a joint statement, "The Word and Will of the Lord concerning the Camp of Israel in their journeyings to the West." "Let all the people of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and those who journey with them, be organized into companies, with a covenants and a promise to keep all the Commandments and Statutes of the Lord our God...let my servants Orson Pratt and Wilford Woodruff organize a company...My people must be tried in all things, that they may be prepared to receive the glory that I have prepared for them, even the glory of Zion..." Orson could say amen to that. The document is now Section 136 of the Doctrine and Covenants. |
