| OCR Text |
Show Page 12 him in adventure after mettlesome adventure. Sometime between 1807 and the close of the decade, Jared and his burgeoning family braved the Catskills and progressed up Hudson Valley in search of something new. Their destination, the town of Hartford, New York, lay about twenty miles across Lake George from the Dickinson home, and had been settled by numerous Connecticut Pratts in the 1790s. One of these, Captain Samuel Pratt, had fought in the Revolution. This was to be the birthplace of Apostle Orson Pratt. Hartford stands near the junction of the Champlain and Hudson Valleys on the northwest slope of Bald Mountain. Father Jared may have been attracted here by the hillside fields of domestic flax, perhaps intending to farm and process it himself. Spinning the fibers represented an important industry here - Jared's old weaver's training now proved saluable after all. And if he could not earn his living as a weaver, he could perhaps trade in the yarn which as yet was produced at home on the old foot-spinning wheel. In early spring the flax was "swingled," or threshed, by hand and then combed for the wheel. With the Adirondacks on one side and the Vermont mountains on the other, Hartford at last seemed the home Jared was looking for. In this small valley, Orson Pratt was born September 19, 1811. By his own account he lived in Hartford until he was four years old, and remembered on one occasion visiting his grandfather, Samuel Dickinson. Bible doctrines of morality and honesty were "diligently instilled" in the young boy from the first. Aside from the demands of the farm, his father cultivated in his sons an interest in books and music, as he was, by Parley's record, a sometime school teacher and singer. By 1812, flax culture was profitably entrenched in Hartford. For two years, Jared Pratt farmed the silky plants and his family, trying to break the penurious cycle ^f wandering, carded them into yarn. But mechanization |
