REMOVAL TO NAUVOO—SICKNESS—MIRACULOUSLY HEALED—ACQUIRE CONSIDERABLE PROPERTY—ACQUAINTANCE WITH JOSEPH SMITH—MISSIONS TO ALBANY, AND THE EASTERN STATES; ALSO, WITH ELDER J. W. CROSBY, TO NOVA SCOTIA—PREACH IN JEFFERSON CO., N. Y., AND ORGANIZE SIX BRANCHES OF THE CHURCH—TRAVEL TO NEW BRUNSWICK—INVITED TO PREACH—BAPTISMS—PERSECUTION—THE AUTHOR WAYLAID BY A MOB, BEATEN, AND LEFT FOR DEAD—ATTACK ON THE HOUSE WHERE HE AND ELDER CROSBY WERE IN BED—THE MOB DISPERSED BY MRS. SHELTON—THEY RETURN AND RE-ATTACK THE HOUSE—ARE DISPERSED BY MR. SHELTON—TWO BRANCHES ORGANIZED.
The doctrine of the gathering had been taught the Saints, at Pomphret, and, in common with the others, I felt a great desire to gather up and live with the body of the Church. With this idea I endeavored to dispose of my farm, but failure in my efforts to do this was the only thing that saved me from a share in the Missouri persecutions.
The winter previous to the poisoning case I sold my farm, and the time for me to vacate expired just before this took place.
For several months I was preparing to remove, getting teams, wagons, etc. When the time arrived, with my wife and children, and part of the branch, including the woman who had been poisoned and her husband, I started to find the Church, thinking it was still in Missouri, though we had heard that it had been mobbed and broken up.
We journeyed until we came to Springfield, about a hundred miles from Nauvoo, where we met with some brethren who had been driven out of Missouri, and who told us that the Church was collecting in Nauvoo, then called Commerce. We turned our course in that direction, and arrived there in June, the weather being very warm at the time.
We found brothers Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon there, with a few others. The rest were coming in daily, in a most distressed condition. Many of them were sick, and they had no house to enter when they arrived. The nature of the climate, combined with the hardships they had endured, soon made those ill who were not so previously.
Numbers of the sick and dying had to lie on the ground, with only a blanket over them. No springs or wells were handy, and the Mississippi water was unfit to drink, so that many had to go miles for water to give to the afflicted. Sometimes one would go on horseback with a jug, and fetch a little for the sick, and take it round to them. It was frequently declared that the persecutions in Missouri were small matters compared to the miseries endured at this period in Nauvoo.
My family, with myself, were also taken sick, and I laid so for two or three weeks. I was so far gone that I was quite senseless, and all thought I was dying. Doubtless I should have died, but one day Joseph Smith was passing by my door (for I had managed to procure a house) and was called in, and, as I was afterwards informed, laid his hands upon me, and commanded me to arise and walk, in the name of the Lord. The first thing I knew was that I found myself walking on the floor, perfectly well, and within ten minutes afterwards I was out of the house visiting my daughter, whom I had not seen for nearly a month. I felt so full of joy and happiness, that I was greatly surprised that every one else was not as full of praise as myself.
This was the second time that I had been healed instantly by the power of God, through His servants.
Attempts had been made to build a city on the site of Nauvoo, previous to the entrance of the Saints, but all the inhabitants, with the exception of three or four families, had died, and the Saints used the deserted houses as far as they would go.