Daniel's First Contact with the Mormons
Daniel said during his first twenty-two years of
his life he attended different churches, Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist etc. Sunday,
August 14, 1842, he and his shop-mate, Mr. Woodard, a Journeyman, while strolling around
the shipping wharf of the Boston Harbor, joined a crowd of people grouped together
listening to a discussion between a Mormon Elder G J Adams (sometimes called the big gun)
and Mr. Nickerson an infidel preacher. At the close of their discussion, Elder Adams
announced there would be a meeting held the next Sunday in the Boylston Hall, over a meat
market, near where Daniel worked. Daniel and his pal agreed to be there, which they did.
It was at this meeting Daniel for the first time heard a Mormon sermon.
It was delivered by Elder G J Adams, there on a
mission. Daniel said his sermon affected him, but not so with his pal, Mr. Woodward.
Daniel
Meets Ann Cook, His First Wife
Daniel told me that it was at this meeting he
first met Ann Cook and her sister, and that love at first sight impelled him to introduce
himself to her. He asked permission to accompany her to her home, as he said, to find out
where she lived. She consented to his proposal, and he not only found out where she lived,
but also that she came from St John, Newbrunswick, Canada, and was working in Boston as a
servant girl. Thereafter he said he visited her once a week, staying certain reasonable
hours.
Daniel's
Illness
August 22, 1842, Daniel records in his diary
that he was taken with a very sick spell, which his doctor, Tover, pronounced as typhus
fever. Fortunately he was