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Show Page 267 CHAPTER XI KEY TO THE UNIVERSE Temple Block in Salt Lake City had been the center of the Mormon world since Orson Pratt walked over the spot on July 21, 1847. It was also the center of his personal world. By 1870, the six towers of the Temple were rising gradually within the gravel-strewn compound only five feet above the solid shafts of the foundation. Hundreds of ox teams snorted in and out of the adobe walls each week, dragging polished granite slabs for the Temple, while tons of rock were hoisted into place by sagging pine derricks. In the northwest corner of the square stood a mysterious little building. This was the Endowment House, like Moses' tabernacle in the wilderness, a temporary temple for the sacred ordinances of the Latter-day Saints - the only place on earth where these ceremonies could be performed until the completion of the great grey fortress of the Lord a few rods away. Here, Orson Pratt, with a number of sons, daughers, and wives, repaired several times that summer to be baptized for their dead. In cooperation with Reverend Frederick Chapman of Connecticut, Orson had obtained and helped publish the names of thousands of his relatives, descendants of the erstwhile Lieutenant William Pratt. By the end of the summer, every individual known on those records would become Saints posthumously. Baptism and other ordinances for the dead were rarely performed in the House - it was thoughtbest to serve only the living there, as a rule. However his family were permitted to be baptized over two thousand, six hundred times that summer; Orson interrupted the |