OCR Text |
Show Page 5 CHAPTER I EXILES INTO CANAAN "A few centuriffi ago, when the old world groaned under the hand of tyranny and oppression, when persecution raged against those who desired to be the humble followers of Christ, a great western continent was discovered, to which a few hardy brave pioneers sailed...Among these humble pilgrim fathers were my ancestors...." I The "great western continent" bore mystic significance for Orson Pratt from his earliest awareness of the land. Reared in the hilly forests between the Hudson River and the Massachusetts marches, he was nurtured north of Washington Irving country in a landscape of Biblical place-names and Revolutionary references. Colonial settlements long-established had peered into the wilderness a hundred years as the Hudson narrowed above Dutchess County, but hard upon the War of Independence came new pioneers crossing into the foothills of the Green Mountains, into counties with new names like "Columbia" and "Washington." Into these environs came Orson Pratt's grandfather, Obadiah Pratt and 2 his fifteen-year-old bride, Jemima, around the year 1769. The French and Indian War had ended, and the revolutionary impulse was already stirring in the cities. But this young man, a fourth-generation American, seemed intent on fulfilling another, a theological, imperative - as the namesake of the prophet Obadiah,"servant of the Lord," he may have felt himself one of the "exiles of Israel" uho, according to that laconic prophet, would 3 "possess Canaan," settling in the township of that name in Columbia County, 4 New York. Eleven children were born to the Pratts in this community, which exemplified the transformation of "Columbia" into "Canaan" - of |