Stoux City Academy of Science and Letters. 101 
years, and he to furnish them with board, lodging and 
clothing not exceeding in value a specific sum per year, 
and written bonds from the husband and wife of each 
family were entered into in August, 1854, by thirty fami- 
lies, nearly every family that remained faithful. 
They were organized into a quorum, as it was called, 
and the work of the colony was apportioned among speci- 
fied ones to do the sowing, reaping, grist and saw-mill 
work, logging, and a head cook was appointed, and there- 
after, until August, 1855, they were all fed as one com- 
munity. An inventory of this property thus put into the 
Chief Steward’s hands, exclusive of the saw and grist 
mills, printing establishment, agricultural and mechani- 
cal tools and household goods, was as follows: 27 horses, 
300 cattle, 61 hogs, 80 sheep. 
At the Solemn Assembly in August, 1854, several 
were expelled for apostacy, heresy, misrepresentation 
and lying to immigrants on their way to Preparation, 
and calumniating the chief teacher, Chas. B. Thompson. 
For some cause the order for public sale of the lands by 
the government was not carried out, and they were not 
obliged to buy all the land or prove up on the pre-emp- 
tion, but Thompson bought some, including the townsite. 
There can be no doubt that these members who thus sac- 
rificed their property tc the common cause were sincere 
and devout and of more than ordinary self-denial. 
In September, 1854, Thompson started a -weekly 
newspaper called “The Preparation News,” after the 
plan of an ordinary country weekly religious and family 
newspaper. His former monthly “Zion’s Harbinger and 
Baneemy’s Organ” had been irregularly published and at 
times was not issued till three or four months after it’s 
ostensible date. The December, 1854, number of this 
magazine contained news under the date of May, 1855. 
In the spring of 1855 this magazine was consolidated 
with the Preparation News which later paper was called 
Preparation News and Ephriam’s Messenger. His “Or- 
gan and Harbinger” he was to publish thereafter three 
times a year immediately after each Solemn Assembly, 
which was to be the grand channel of promulgating the 
Keclesiastical Laws of Jehovah through Baneemy to 
Ephriam and to make known the decrees of Heaven unto 
men. 
