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Show Page 162 them, he called Sarah's little boy "Laron" and Delia's baby girl, less than two months old, "Lucy Adelia," in honor of her mother and grandmother, Lucy Bishop. The infant was the first of a long list of Orson's offspring by his plural wives. Orson went to a party in February for the "citizen defenders of Nauvoo" and heard the desperate tale of the battle between the poor of the Saints left behind who were suddenly forced to fight an artilleried band of "neighbors" the previous autumn - perhaps he heard how his brother Anson had charged the first Mormon cannon with the first ball, and had fled across the river with the aged Charity Pratt, his mother, in tow. For six months Orson could rest at Quarters. He watched the camp pull back across the Missouri when Indian agents protested their "stripping" the territory, observed the log tabernacle thrown up in three weeks at Kanesville, Iowa, and dedicated it before a congregation of one thousand. It was a far cry from the glories of the Nauvoo temple, but it served well for a sanctuary to reorganize the Church of Christ. On December 27, the camp met in conference to hear Orson Pratt address them on the order of the priesthood - he concluded with a motion that Brigham Young be "elected" president of the Church and authorized to restore the Quorum of the First Presidency, as Joseph had established it. Brigham was unanimously sustained, and he took with him from the Quorum of Twelve both Heber Kimball and Willard Richards for counselors. This action taken, Orson Pratt was confirmed in his calling - third now among the apostles, junior only to his own brother Parley and to Orson Hyde. Orson's own relation to the new "president, prophet, seer, and revelator" of Mormondom was problematic but cordial. He continually, in his letters to the President, craves his "lenient eye,"6 for he was probably well-conditioned to Young's irascibility |