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Show Page 51 to teach the eastern Saints their duty on this account. For several weeks the Twelve filtered through New York state soliciting contributions for Zion. Orson preached up and down the Erie shore around Westfield, then through Catteraugus County, and north to Lyons, near Palmyra. Everywhere the message was the same: the redemption of Zion. Traveling in twos, the Twelve managed to drum up money here and there, 2 $3.50 at one meeting in Portage, New York, discoursing in taverns as well as meetinghouses and private homes. But Orson Pratt was about to collect a different sort of reward for his preaching. On June 7, Orson and John F. Boynton boarded a steamer at Oswego and sailed a little way across Lake Ontario until they reached Sackets Harbor, a little Jefferson County port town not far from the Canadian border. Wandering in this neighborhood, preaching at the homes of members, the two brethren put out an appointment for a meeting near the farm of Mr. William Bates of Henderson Township. Orson gave a sermon on sectarian corruption, returning the following Wednesday to discuss the Millennium. A sober village girl, the daughter of Cyrus Bates, may have attended these lectures to hear the Mormon gospel from the two twenty-three-year-old apostles, for she applied to Orson Pratt for baptism upon his return to Sackets Harbor the next day. The evening of June 18, 1835, Orson baptized Sarah Marinda Bates, the girl of eighteen whom he was to court by letter for nearly a 3 year afterward. Orson did not remain in the neighborhood more than a week, however, departing for Vermont, rounding the Adirondacks and Lake Champlain, he found himself once again in the northern counties where he had enjoyed so much missionary success. Here the Twelve came together, converging on the old Snow barn at St. Johnsbury. Orson continued down the Connecticut River, stopping for two weeks in Hanover, Vermont, where he lectured congregations including Dartmouth College students. While conducting meetings in and |