| 279 two prominent citizens, Judge Dawkins and Mr. Grissom, who before were unknown to the missionaries, stepped forward, paid for the night already occupied and engaged the hall for a week, inviting the missionaries to occupy. The result was that the Gainesville Branch was organized August 28, with eight members, Moses O. Howard, presiding priest, seven of these new converts. Soon after the missionaries returned to Western Florida, and the following April Elder Smith was released from the Southern field, since which no especial effort has been made to prosecute the work in Eastern Florida.
About this time the church in Utah was having some trouble over property bequeathed by President Brigham Young in his will. This resulted in some litigation, in the course of which the executors of the will, George Q. Cannon, Albert Carrington, and Brigham Young, Jr., were confined in the penitentiary of Utah on the order of Judge Boreman, for contempt of court. The supreme court of Utah reversed this order and the prisoners were released after being confined from August 4 till the 28th, 1879. The contention seemed to be brought about by the executors turning over certain properties to the church which by the will was bequeathed to the heirs. Some of the heirs sued the executors and President John Taylor as trustee-in-trust for the church for possession of the property. The court sustained the contention of the heirs and ordered the property conveyed to them, which the defendants did not do, and for which they were adjudged guilty of contempt. John Taylor gave bonds and the executors went to prison, as before related. On October 4, the case was compromised and settled by the church paying the heirs seventy-five thousand dollars and retaining the property in question.
In the summer or autumn of 1879 the church republished the historical work known as "Joseph Smith the Prophet and his Progenitors," written by Lucy Smith, the mother of the Martyrs. It was first published in 1852 in Liverpool, England, by S. W. Richards and Company, under supervision of Orson Pratt. It was
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