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Show Page 191 The treatise, along with the fifteen other pamphlets Orson had written during this mission, was bound for distribution just as he prepared to depart. A title page and table of contents were gotten up, and for the first time the bulk of Orson's theological writings appeared in one volume published at Liverpool by Orson's successor, Apostle Franklin D. Richards. This time Orson was really going home - back to Salt Lake, back to his three families, back to the whipping of the desert. The release became official when Richards took over, and Orson arrived at Kanesville aboard the St. Louis steamer "Statesman" on May 20, a year and a day since his last landfall there. The passage was not made without sorrow - Sarah had lost one baby, Marlon,in Liverpool, and another little girl born in England, did not survive the sea: "Marintha Althera Pratt, my daughter, died March 24 1851, at sea, a few miles northwest of the island of St. Domingo. She was brought on shore and buried in in the Kansas burying ground, Jackson County, Missouri..." Such difficulties had to be left behind - it was time to move everyone west. By now there were three boys and five girls. Orson, the eldest, was nearly fourteen; Celestia, nine, was the oldest of the girls. Two infant girls had been born in Orson's absence. Delia's baby received the name "Elsina," while Mary Ann's was christened "Vianna." And the family now included another wife - the devoted Marian Ross, the Liverpool serving girl, who was to become Orson's sixth on February 19, 1852, under the hand of Brigham Young. After a month of outfitting, Orson crossed the Missouri with the company of John Brown, which included Orson's brother William Dickinson Pratt and his family, and the George D. Watt group - Watt had been one of the earliest Scottish converts in 1841, and was an old t„.--A ^f firann's. After camping at the site of Winter Quarters, Orson |
