Growth of Mendon Branch
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Membership in Mendon, N.Y., soon grew to 30 people. By 1832, nearly half of the Baptist Church members, including Heber C. Kimball and others in Mendon, were baptized bringing membership to 65 people. The branch was comprised of Brigham Young and his wife, Miriam; Phineas Young and his wife, Clarissa; John P. Greene and his wife, Rhoda; Heber C. Kimball and his wife, Vilate, and others including Nathan Tomlinson and his wife; and Israel Barlow with his mother and brothers and sisters. The dance hall of the inn became the meetinghouse of the Mendon Branch.
Heber C. Kimball recorded a scene he repeatedly saw as members of the Mendon Branch walked past his home on their way to the Tomlinson Inn where Church meetings were held.
"Women would come from Victor," he wrote, "a distance of three miles, to the town of Mendon where I lived; and I have seen them walk barefooted until they came near where I lived, and then they would put on their white stockings and shoes to go into meeting; and when they came out of meeting and had passed off a little out of sight, they would pull off their shoes and stockings and go home barefooted, for the purpose of saving their fine shoes and stockings they had spun and knit out of flax. (Journal of Discourses 6:132.)
