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Show Page 281 leadership of Joseph Smith's oldest son, the redoubtable "Joseph III." About seventy "Josephite" families lived in the vicinity, awaiting the redemption of Zion among their thousands of unsuspecting neighbors; Orson found with them the widow of Apostle John E. Page, whom he knew well. She greeted him kindly enough, though there was little love between "Josephites" and "Brighamites," and offered the two emissaries from Salt Lake a bunch of "grapes grown in Zion." But Orson was depressed by this, and by the small, old and dilapidated farmhouses which encumbered the "center place." Most of the persecutors were long dead, he found, with the exception of one Colonel Pitcher, who considered himself a good-hearted man, naturally, "acting under orders" in that long-ago episode. Orson was surprised to encounter William E. McLellin, once a member of the Quorum of Twelve, still living in Independence. To Orson, the old man was dreadfully confused, believing in the apostleship but denying the priesthood, revering the Book of Mormon but rejecting the other revelations; in one breath he would extol Joseph Smith, and in the next slander him. McLellin clung to his visitors with wistful relish, and only let them alone regretfully when they insisted on departing for Richmond. In this village across the Missouri, Orson found the only living "Witness" to the Book of Mormon. David Whitmer, a well-preserved seventy-three, was a "good-sized man...close-shaven, hair perfectly white and thin...has a large head and a very pleasant, manly countenance." whitmer, though dissident for many years, seemed wonderfully surprised and pleased to see Orson Pratt and said he would not have known him, he had grown so stout; he remembered Orson as a "slender, bashful, timid boy." Despite his pleasant conversation, Whitmer seemed curiously inaccessible - and the two apostles could not get him alone to ask some vital questions. He |
