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Show Page 13 brought an end to these possibilities, as the firm of Joel and Samuel Downs constructed near Hartford a carding mill, operated by water power. Jared and his family were packing up to leave, when it was found that Charity was expecting her fifth child. So they remained in Hartford through the spring of 1815, and, after Nelson Pratt was born on May 26, it is likely that they pulled out . This would correspond to Orson's recollection of moving in his fourth year - although they may possibly have stayed into the noted "cold summer" of 1816. The explosion of a volcano in the Indies layered the atmosphere with heavy dust, resulting in temperature decreases world-wide. Hartford suffered frosts throughout that fateful summer, and farm failures of heavy proportions may account for Jared's removal south in search of warmer 22 weather. It was thought "the sun was cooling and all mankind would die." The uncanny chill of Orson's fourth summer very likely sent the Pratts hastening back down the Hudson Valley. Whatever the reasons, Jared retreated to the familiarity of Canaan sometime in 1815-16, and here Orson would grow to adolescence. Hard by the Massachusetts boundary, Orson's home in the northern part of Canaan township was known as New Lebanon after 1818. The forbidding hills gushed thermal streams into the valley - Mt. Lebanon, one of the Taghkanic range, gave its name to a hot spring nearby, where a popular resort was developing around the year 1820. Lebanon Springs and its hotel, the "Columbia Hall," soon grew famous, attracting such visitors as LaFayette, John Quincy Adams, and Daniel Webster. Several native sons of Columbia County were to rise to equal the stature of these visitors, among them Martin Van Buren of Kinderhook, a town some nine miles west of Canaan, who was to become the eighth president of the United States and would, in later years, excite the contempt of Orson Pratt. Within the little sphere of New Lebanon, another boy, three "y^ars younger than Orson, would become governor of New |
