We journeyed two and two in different routes visiting the churches and instructing the people as we travelled. President Joseph Smith and myself journeyed together. We had a pleasant and prosperous mission among the churches, and some very interesting times in preaching to the public. We visited Freedom, Catteraugus County, N. Y.; tarried over Sunday, and preached several discourses, to which rite people listened with great interest; we were kindly and hospitably entertained among them. We baptized a young man named Heman Hyde; his parents were Presbyterians, and his mother, on account of the strength of her traditions, thought that we were wrong, and told me afterwards that she would much rather have followed him to an earthly grave than to have seen him baptized.
Soon afterwards, however, herself, her husband, and the rest of the family, with some thirty or forty others, were all baptized and organized into a branch of the Church—called the Freedom branch —from which nucleus the light spread and souls were gathered into the fold in all the regions round. Thus mightily grew the word of God, or the seed sown by that extraordinary personage, the Prophet and Seer of the nineteenth century.
As we journeyed day after day, and generally lodged together, we had much sweet communion concerning the things of God and the mysteries of His kingdom, and I received many admonitions and instructions which I shall never forget.
Arriving in Geneseo, we met with the other Elders who had started from Kirtland on the same mission, and with others who were local, and held a general Conference. Among those whose hospitality we shared in that vicinity was old father Beeman and his amiable and interesting family. He was a good singer and so were his three daughters; we were much edified and comforted in their society, and were deeply interested in hearing the old gentleman and brother Joseph converse on their early acquaintance and history. He had been intimate with Joseph long before the first organization of the Church; had assisted him to preserve the plates of the Book of Mormon from the enemy, and had at one time had them concealed under his own hearth.
At this Conference we had an interesting time; public meetings were convened; multitudes assembled to hear, and Presidents Joseph Smith and S. Rigdon addressed the crowds in great plainness of speech with mighty power. At the close of this Conference we again parted company, President Smith and most of the Elders returned home to Kirtland.
I then journeyed in connection with a young Elder, named H. Brown, as far as Henderson County, in northern New York, where lived Elder Brown's father, and where there was quite a branch of the Church. I visited with them for a few days, resting from my toils and ministering among them. Taking leave of these friends, I went to Sackett's Harbor, where all were yet strangers to the fullness of the gospel. Leaving an appointment at a hotel that I would return in a few days thence, and address the people wherever they saw fit to assemble, I crossed over the bay to a country neighborhood, called Pillar Point. In this neighborhood there had been some preaching by our Elders; but no branch of the Church organized, though there had been one or two instances of healing, and some few were believing. Here I appointed a meeting for evening in a school house; it was crowded full of people; indeed, all could not get in.
As the meeting closed a man named William Cory stepped forward, and earnestly begged of me to go home with him and minister to his wife, as she was lying at the point of death in consequence of a lingering sickness, not having risen up in her bed for six days without swooning or going into fits. He further said that he was worn out by being up with her every night, and that his neighbors were weary with watching, and it was doubted whether she could survive through the night without relief.
The Spirit would not suffer me to go with him that night, but I promised to call in the morning. At this many voices were heard, saying: "Yes, yes, there's a case in hand; let him heal her and we'll all believe." Others exclaimed: "I wonder if she'll be at his meeting tomorrow! We shall see, and if so, we'll all believe." Expressions like these, joined with my own weakness, only tended to dampen my courage and confidence in the case.
I went home with a friend who invited me to partake of his hospitality for the night. As we entered his house, we found one of his children very sick with a violent pain in the head, to which it had been subject from its birth, and which came at regular periods, and was never relieved till it gathered and broke at his ear—so said his parents. The little fellow was rolling from side to side in his bed, an screeching and screaming with pain. I stepped to the bedside, and laid my hands upon his head in the name of Jesus Christ; he was instantly made whole and went to sleep. Next morning he got up well, and continued so; he said that the pain all left him as soon as my hands touched his head.
In the morning, before I arose, I had a vision, as follows: I saw a log house, and entered it through a door at the northwest corner; in the northeast corner lay a woman sick in bed; in the southeast corner was a small door opening into an adjoining room, and near it a stairway, where stood a ladder; the fireplace being in the south end. As I entered the house and laid my hands on the woman, she rose up and was made whole; the house being crowded, she took her seat near the fire and under the ladder, or near by it, and she praised God with a shout of glory, clapping her hands for joy and exclaimed: "Thank God, I'm every whit whole." I awoke from my vision and related the same to the family where I stayed.