Prest. | Clerk |
The package to the missionaries in the Society Islands—not the Sandwich Islands—was approved by the council on 11 April 1845. (Council of Fifty, “Record,” 11 Apr. 1845.)
Fielding was preparing to return to Great Britain on a mission; he apparently left Nauvoo sometime in late June or early July. According to a report that Addison Pratt, one of the Society Islands missionaries, received in November 1846, Fielding left the package in New York, after which it was eventually carried to California by Latter-day Saints aboard the Brooklyn on their 1846 journey. From California they forwarded the package to the Society Islands. However, the ship carrying the package traveled only as far as Maui, where the package was supposedly left with instructions to send it to the Society Islands “by the first oppurtunity.” Though the package never reached the missionaries, Pratt learned that it contained letters from his wife, Louisa Barnes Pratt; Brigham Young; and “many others from friends in various places,” as well as a volume of the Times and Seasons. (Amos Fielding, Alleghany City, PA, to Brigham Young, 25 July 1845, in Nauvoo Neighbor, 13 Aug. 1845, [2]–[3]; Pratt, Journal, 17 Nov. 1846.)
Nauvoo Neighbor. Nauvoo, IL. 1843–1845.
Pratt, Addison. Journals, 1843–1852. Addison Pratt, Autobiography and Journals, 1843–1852. CHL. MS 8226, fds. 4–11.Pratt, Addison. Autobiography and Journals, 1843–1852. CHL.