How Lorenzo spent the interval.—His next mission.—Difficulties to be overcome.—Lays out a city.—Description of the premises.—Builds a house.—President Young visits him.—Introduces a precedent.—Description of it.—Succeeded by railroads.—Gift of the Gospel.—The Patriarch's promise.—A sick man.—Faith in Lorenzo's administration.—A handkerchief is sent.—He blesses and dedicates it.—Is taken to the patient.—Placed upon him.—He recovers.—A letter.—In memoriam.—To Elder Porter Squires.—Expressions of gratitude.—Good wishes and blessings.
The interval which succeeded Lorenzo's Italian mission was occupied in school teaching, and in domestic and legislative labors—occasionally accompanying President Young in his visits to the settlements and Stakes of Zion, preaching, administering to the sick, etc., and as a minute-man, officiating in the various duties of his calling.
The next mission of importance to which he was called was to locate fifty families in Box Elder County, sixty miles north of Salt Lake City. There a small settlement had been formed, which, for want of the right master spirit, had lost every vestige of enterprise and was minus every aim in the direction of advancement. To diffuse active energies and a spirit of progress into this stereotyped condition of people, was not unlike raising the dead; and a man of less strength of purpose would have faltered. Not so with the one in question. Prompt to the call, he went to work, laid out a city, naming it Brigham in honor of the President of the Church, moved his family to the new city, and thus laid the foundation for the great financial co-operative enterprise which subsequently he there built up.
When the county was organized by the authority of the Legislature, he was appointed to preside over it, as a Stake of of Zion. He was elected member of the Legislative Council, to represent the district composed of the counties of Box Elder and Weber.
Here follows Lorenzo's own version of the situation: When I arrived in Box Elder County, I found the location where Brigham City now flourishes in a very unprosperous condition. Whether its change from a primitive state should be called improvement, i. e., whether it was better or worse for what had been done on the premises, would puzzle an antiquarian. Even the log meeting house, with its ground floor and earth roof, was more extensively patronized as a receptacle for bed bugs than for the assemblage of Saints.
At first, in locating there, I only took a portion of my family, as a small and incommodious adobie hut was the only tenement attainable. During the summer and fall I succeeded in erecting a house, one story and half in height, thirty feet by forty. It being impossible to obtain shingles, I covered the building with slabs, and for two winters the rattling of those slabs, put in motion by the canyon breezes, supplied us with music in the absence of organs and pianos. I had thus covered the roof of my house, but before my front door was in, and all my floors laid, and before any plastering was done, our house was the stopping place and the home of President Brigham Young and his company of tourists, whenever they visited these northern settlements. We sometimes entertained as many as forty at once. As soon as my house was up and partly finished, I had all of my family with me; and on the occasion of these visits of the Presidency, my family all united to make our visitors as comfortable as possible.
To manifest due respect, and a proper appreciation of those visits, which were productive of a vast amount of good to the Saints scattered throughout the Territory, I introduced a precedent which was widely adopted and carried into effect, until railroads superseded those lengthy carriage drives. To perpetuate a remembrance of this unique order of reception, I will give a description of the original one, as follows:
On learning the precise time when the party would arrive, I arranged a programme for the occasion. In the first place, a set of hands was detailed to put the roads in good condition for carriages, by clearing away stones, filling crevices, repairing bridges and causeways, etc. Much care and labor were devoted to organizing the escort to meet the President's long train of carriages some miles from the city. We had not the means in those early days of our history to be very elaborate in furnishing equipments as would have gratified our vanity, but what we lacked we supplied in ingenuity and enterprise, in fixing up what our means and circumstances would admit.
We selected forty or fifty intelligent, interesting looking young gentlemen, dressed in gray uniforms, each carrying a lance, the top of which was pointed with shining material, from which gay ribbons floated gracefully in the breeze. These young gentlemen were mounted on our finest horses and properly instructed and disciplined for the occasion. Next, we selected sixteen or twenty fine intelligent young ladies, had them dressed in white, with corresponding decorations. These were seated in wagons, each drawn by two span of horses, properly caparisoned. All the members of the escort were carefully instructed respecting a proper manner of giving the salute on meeting the visiting party; the various branches of the escort bearing flags and beautiful banners with appropriate mottoes. All were preceded by one or two carriages occupied by the authorities and leading men of the city, the whole led by a martial band under the direction of the city marshal.
In connection with the foregoing arrangement, the children, in their Sunday attire, gathered from all parts of the city, and many from adjacent settlements, were formed into line on each side of the street, and as the company entered, it was conducted through these long lines of children to my house, amid loud cheers, the ringing of bells and waving of banners.