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Show Page 18 Orson managed to get in "three or four months" of school - he mentions becoming quite "familiar" with the rules in "Daball's Arithmetic," a ciphering book common to American primary schools in the Nineteenth Century. Orson Pratt was to dabble in mathematics all his life, eventually proposing some experimental formulae for solving algebraic equations. Although Orson did not return home after his eleventh year, except for short visits, he did not lose track of his family. Early in the spring of 1825, when Orson was thirteen, his brother Anson called and proposed to him a new adventure. Anson, twenty-four and footloose, planned to set up farming on Long Island, in the fertile seascape meadows near the Sound. After eighteen long months on the Church farm, Orson was ready for a change. He and Anson set out, hiking down the Hudson, or perhaps by boat, and engaged to farm for a certain "Mr. Greenock of Hurlgate," about six miles from New York City. (No village of "Hurlgate" existed on Long Island; Orson probably refers to "Hellgate," or "Hellegat", and old Dutch designation for the rocks just off Long Island City.) Here, on the northwestern extremity of the island, lived the old family of John Greenoak IV, a squire in his middle forties, who had inherited in 1821 the estate locally kriownwais ; "Hellgate." This man was probably 30 Orson's "Mr. Greenock." Modern New York City has long since invaded this peaceful cove; but in 1825, the island rolled away, green and meadowed, unencumbered except for farms and peaceful villages such as Brooklyn and Flushing.Newtown, the nearest village to Hellgate, featured a small academy which Orson attended for three months, studying arithmetic and bookkeeping. After one year on Long Island, he was sent as an apprentice to a cabinet-making firm in New York, probably at his own request. Given his penchant for mathematics and meticulous technical work, Orson naturally tired of the farm and sought a craftsman's career. |
