1870-01-24-New York Times-The Mormon Fever

The Mormon Fever

New York Times, 24 January 1870, pg. 8

THE MORMON FEVER.

Lively Conference of the Faithful on Long Island—Efforts to Establish an Eastern Community.

The Mormon missionaries, whose advent here a few weeks ago was duly chronicled in these columns, are laboring hard and earnestly on Long Island to spread, as they term it, ‘the only true Gospel,’ and to gather into the fold of the Latter Day Saints as many as will hear and believe their doctrines. For some weeks past their most able speakers have been traveling over the Island, preaching when and where they could with but little success until receiving some encouragement in the neighborhood of Hempstead, they finally determined to make it the center of a grant missionary effort, and three days ago General BURTON, who is Commander-in-Chief of the Mormon Militia and a Bishop of the Church, established his headquarters at Baldwinsville, near Rockville Center, organized a conference of meeting for the discussion and exposition of Mormon doctrines and for the service of prayer. Assisted by a chosen number of priests and elders, Bishop BURTON has held protracted meetings at this place since Friday morning until last night, and it is said with a degree of success. His avowed object is to form a new branch of the Church, which he hopes in time will spread itself all over Long Island, so that we may safely infer that an eastern Utah is clearly aimed at. As reported previously, there has been a small community of Mormons in Williamsburg, but so unimportant in a missionary point of view, that BRIGHAM YOUNG, feeling the necessity of having a powerful branch in the Eastern States, sent out a large body of his shrewdest elders, ostensibly to arouse the drooping courage of the scattered members of his flock, but in reality to settle on Long Island, where he had already many subjects and friends, and build there a powerful congregation equal in strength, he hopes, to that of the West. We are assured that this Hempstead demonstration, vigorous though it be, is only the commencement of a still greater effort. Every town and village on the island, it is said, will be visited by missionaries, and if possible the nucleus of a Mormon congregation will be planted at each point. For this purpose nearly all of the missionary force, numbering seventy-five priests and elders, with many more to come, have been assigned to districts, of which they are expected to give satisfactory accounts.

The services at No. 145 Grant street, Williamsburg, yesterday, were not so largely attended as they have been hitherto. In the afternoon, Elder THOS. JACKSON, of Utah, preached on the ‘Revelation of Mormonism to Jos. Smith,’ and in the evening delivered a discourse on the ‘Antiquity of the Gospel.’