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Show Page 64 while Orson made his painstaking way down the coast and around to New Orleans on shipboard with his family. In large part ignorant of the details of the conflict, Orson must have been horrified upon arrival in St. Louis at the news of Joseph Smith's and Parley's incarceration. It was November, Orson and Sally gave a melancholy welcome to a new infant daughter, Lydia, and the Saints several hundred miles to the west were making foreboding preparations to leave the state en masses Iced in and without money to continue, Orson remained in St. Louis, doing manual work for enough money to make the journey to Far West. A full year of struggle would pass before the long-awaited departure for England. As the drama of prison and trial unfolded at Liberty, Missouri, the Mormons quailed under the armed details of the state militia. Sampson Avard, a convert of Orson Pratt, had denounced the Prophet in court and denied having led the "Danites" or "Sons of Dan," a group of Mormon terrorists in Caldwell County. Joseph Smith and Parley P- Pratt languished on filthy food and watched as their brothers burned with sickness; once again it seemed that the Mormon community was about to evaporate. But the Saints were meeting quietly, echoing the gathering spirit of one Brigham Young, who, while Joseph was out of reach, led the organization of a great migration eastward, just beyond the grasp of Missouri law - in Illinois. When the river thawed, Orson took his family up to the town of Quincy where many of the exiles had found a temporary refuge. Brigham Young, now senior apostle, had quit Far West himself in February 1839, and the exodus was now in full swing. At Quincy, the Twelve met under Young's supervision to consider the purchase of sites to the north - lands in both Iowa and Illinois - for the resettlement of the Saints. Another |