Mormon pioneers
The Mormon pioneers were members of
The journey was taken by about 70,000 people, beginning with advance parties sent out by church leaders in March 1846 after the 1844
Background of the migration
Since its founding in 1830, members of the LDS Church frequently had conflicts and difficult relations with non-members, due to both their unorthodox religious beliefs and the conduct of the church leaders and members. These and other reasons caused the body of the church to move from one place to another—to
According to church belief, God inspired Brigham Young (Joseph Smith's successor as church president) to call for the Saints (as church members call themselves) to organize and head West, beyond the western frontier of the United States (into what was then Mexico, though the U.S. Army had already captured Santa Fe de Nuevo México and the colonized parts of Alta California in late 1846). During the winter of 1846–1847, Latter-day Saint leaders in Winter Quarters and Iowa laid plans for the migration of the large number of Saints, their equipment, and their livestock. It was here that Young first met Thomas L. Kane, a non-Mormon from Philadelphia with deep personal connections to the administration of U.S. president James K. Polk administration. Kane obtained permission for the Mormons to winter on Indian territory, and the site was originally called Kanesville. Young continued to trust Kane throughout his own lifetime, particularly as an intermediary with the often hostile federal government of the United States. This major undertaking was a significant test of leadership capability and the existing administrative network of the recently restructured church. For his role in the migration, Brigham Young is sometimes referred to as the "American Moses."
Young personally reviewed all available information on the Salt Lake Valley and the
Vanguard company of 1847
Young organized a vanguard company to break the trail west to the Rocky Mountains, gather information about trail conditions, including water sources and Native American tribes, and to ultimately select the central gathering point in the Great Basin. The initial company would select and break the primary trail with the expectation that later pioneers would maintain and improve it. It was hoped that the group could, wherever possible, establish fords and ferries and plant crops for later harvest. In late February, plans were made to gather portable boats, maps, scientific instruments, farm implements and seeds. Techniques for irrigating crops were investigated. A new route on the north side of the Platte River was chosen to avoid major interaction with travelers using the established Oregon Trail on the river's south side. Given the needs of the large volume of Saints who would travel west, church leaders decided to avoid potential conflicts over grazing rights, water access and campsites.
In April 1847, Young consulted with members of the
On April 5, 1847, at 2 p.m., the wagon train moved west from Winter Quarters toward the Great Basin. With the afternoon start, they made three miles (5 km) and camped in a line a few hundred yards from a stand of timber. Journal records show that Young actively managed the journey, supervising details and occasionally giving reprimands when evening and Sunday recreation became rowdy or group members failed to complete their tasks. On one occasion, he chastised the camp's hunters for being wasteful of flesh ... killing more than was really needed. [3] Camp was awakened by a bugle at 5 a.m. and the company was expected to be prepared for travel by 7 a.m. Each day's travel ended at 8:30 p.m. and the camp was in bed by 9 p.m. The company traveled six days during the week, but generally stayed in camp on Sunday to observe the Sabbath.
Some camp members were assigned specific tasks.
Women of the company also performed vital tasks along the way. While much time was spent on traditional activities such as cooking, sewing, and tending children, several women served as scribes and diary keepers. Harriet Page Young, wife of Lorenzo Young, was the first woman selected for the company. She was in ill health and Lorenzo Young feared to leave her and their young children behind. The other original women of the company, Ellen Sanders Kimball, wife of Heber C. Kimball, and Clarissa Decker Young, wife of Brigham Young, were asked to accompany the group to look after Harriet Young and keep her company. The three women were joined by a larger group of women church members from Mississippi who merged with the main party at Laramie, Wyoming.
The first segment of the journey, from Winter Quarters to
During the last week of June,
The vanguard company now faced a more rugged and hazardous journey, and were concerned about negotiating the passes of the Rocky Mountains. They had received conflicting advice, but Young chose to follow the trail used by the Donner–Reed party on their journey to California the previous year. Shortly after leaving Fort Bridger, the group met trapper Miles Goodyear, who owned a trading post at the mouth of the Weber River. He was enthusiastic about the agricultural potential of the large Weber Valley. During the trip through the rugged mountains, the vanguard company divided into three sections. After crossing the Green River, several members of the party suffered from "mountain fever" (probably Colorado tick fever, which is carried by the Rocky Mountain wood tick).[4][5] Young himself became ill soon after meeting Goodyear. The small sick detachment lagged behind the larger group, and a scouting division was created to move ahead on the designated route.
In July 1847, the first company reached the Salt Lake Valley, with scouts Erastus Snow and Orson Pratt entering the valley on July 21. Pratt wrote: ...we could not refrain from a shout of joy, which almost involuntarily escaped from our lips the moment this grand and lovely scenery was within our view. The two scouts undertook a twelve-mile (19 km) exploratory circuit into the valley before returning to the larger party. The next day, larger segments of the valley were explored, streams and hot springs investigated and the first camp established in the Salt Lake Valley. On July 23, Pratt offered a prayer dedicating the land to the Lord. Ground was broken, irrigation ditches were dug, and the first fields of potatoes and turnips were planted.
On July 24, Young first saw the valley from a "sick" wagon driven by his friend,
On July 28, Young established a location for the future Salt Lake Temple and presented a city plan to the larger group for their approval. In August 1847, Young and other selected members of the vanguard company returned to Winter Quarters. By December 1847, more than two thousand Mormons had completed the journey to the Salt Lake Valley. Several hundred, including Young, returned east to gather and organize the companies scheduled for following years. Demographic estimates place 1,611 pioneers in the valley of the Great Salt Lake during the winter of 1847. The adult labor force, however, was quite small as a high percentage of the group, 53.2 percent were under the age of nineteen. Twenty five percent of the total were children under the age of eight.[6]
Each year during the Mormon migration, people continued to be organized into "companies", each company bearing the name of its leader. The company was further divided into groups of 10 and 50 with authority and responsibility delegated downward.
Travel conditions
The pioneers traveled to the Salt Lake Valley in the Great Basin using mainly large farm wagons,
Financial resources of the church members varied, with many families suffering from the loss of land and personal possessions in Missouri, and Illinois. This impacted the resources and supplies each family could draw upon as they covered the more than 1,000 miles (2,000 km) to the Great Basin. Church funds were also limited at this time, but church leaders provided what funding and other material assistance they could to families and companies which were undersupplied.
Covered wagons pulled by oxen were common, particularly in the early American companies. In October 1845, as church members were preparing to leave Nauvoo, the Nauvoo Neighbor printed an extensive list of suggested provisions for each family wagon. The provisions included two to three yoke of oxen, two milk cows, other livestock, arms and ammunition, 15 lb of iron, pulleys and ropes, fishing gear, farming and mechanical equipment, cooking equipment and at least 1000 pounds of flour plus assorted other foodstuffs. Some pioneers overestimated the number of goods they could haul on the long journey. As the oxen weakened under the strain, wagons were lightened by discarding prized possessions, including book collections, family china, and furniture. In 1847, just east of the Rocky Mountains, the Kimball family dug a large hole, wrapped their piano in buffalo skins and carefully buried it. An ox team retrieved the instrument the following spring and transported it to the Salt Lake Valley.[7]
Several later companies were largely made up of people with fewer resources, who pulled or pushed handcarts (similar to wheelbarrows) holding all of their provisions and personal belongings. Many of these pioneers walked much of the way as family members rode in the carts.
Due to the weather in the American heartland, the best time to travel was April–September. Some companies, however, started late in the season which resulted in hardship and sometimes disaster. The most famous of these are the Willie and the Martin handcart companies. Leaving Iowa in July 1856, they did not reach Utah until November, suffering many deaths due to winter weather and the lack of adequate supplies.
The ship Brooklyn
In November 1845, Samuel Brannan, newspaperman and small-scale publisher of the Mormon paper The Prophet (later the New York Messenger), was directed by church elders to charter a ship that would carry its passengers away from the eastern United States to California, which was then part of Mexico. Over the course of two months, Brannan managed to recruit 70 men, 68 women, and 100 children—238 persons total. Brannan negotiated a fare of $75 for adults and half-fare for children with the Captain Abel W. Richardson, master and a principal owner of the ship Brooklyn.[8]
On February 4, 1846 (the same day the Mormon exodus from Nauvoo began), the ship Brooklyn cleared New York harbor and began its nearly 6-month voyage to the Pacific coast of the then-Mexican Territory of California.[9] The ship weighed 445 short tons (404 t) and measured 125 ft x 28 ft × 14 ft (8.5 m × 4.3 m) x 4.3 m) and was built in 1834 by Joseph H. Russell at Newcastle, Maine.[10]
The voyage is the longest passage made by a Mormon emigrant company. The ship Brooklyn sailed from Brooklyn Harbor, New York, and traveled south across the Atlantic equator, around Cape Horn, stopping at the Juan Fernández Islands, then to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), finally docking in Yerba Buena (now San Francisco) on July 29, 1846, having made the sea voyage in five months and twenty-seven days.
Augusta Joyce Crocheron, a passenger on the ship Brooklyn, described the voyage:
As for the pleasure of the trip, we met disappointment, for we once lay becalmed in the tropics, and at another time we were "hatched below" during a terrific storm. Women and children were at night lashed to their berths, for in no other way could they keep in. Furniture rolled back and forth endangering limb and life. The waves swept the deck and even reached the staterooms... Children's voices were crying in the darkness, mother's voices soothing or scolding, men's voices rising above the others, all mingled with the distressing groans and cries of the sick for help, and, above all, the roaring of the wind and howling of the tempest made a scene and feeling indescribable.[8]
The passengers of the ship Brooklyn left the United States with the hope of finding religious freedom. However, they arrived in Mexican Alta California just weeks after its occupation by the United States Navy at the outset of the Mexican–American War. Despite the tensions that drove them from their homes in the Eastern States, the crew and passengers "felt more cheerful and secure." Mormon historian B. H. Roberts noted in his work A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:
On the announcement of the United States naval officer, who boarded the Brooklyn as she came to anchor, that the emigrants "were in the United States of America," three hearty cheers were given in reply... Three weeks previous to the arrival of the Saints, the United States flag had been raised and the country taken possession of in the name of the government which the flag represented.[9]
This dangerous trek of nearly 24,000 miles (39,000 km) would claim 10 lives of the ship's 238 passengers,
Brooklyn Place, in Chinatown, San Francisco, is named for the ship,[12] as was the erstwhile Brooklyn, California.
Later migration
After the initial departure of the Latter-day Saints living in Illinois and Missouri, converts to the church from other areas in the United States and from Europe followed the initial trail to join the main body of the church in Salt Lake City. Every year from 1847 until 1869, church members making this journey were formed into organized companies.[13] Migration continued until about 1890, but those who came by railroad are not generally considered to be "Mormon pioneers."
Danish Mormon pioneers
Mormon pioneers emigrated from many countries. Denmark was one of those countries, with a large number of Mormon emigrants coming to Utah between 1850 and 1910.[14] The migration of Danes was initiated when missionaries from the LDS Church, including Erastus Snow, Peter O. Hansen and two others, were sent to Denmark in 1850. Hansen made the first translation of the Book of Mormon from English, by translating it into Danish.[15] Religious freedom was written into the constitution of the Kingdom of Denmark in 1849. Along with the Danish translation of the Book of Mormon, this opened the area to great success in attaining converts. At that time the LDS Church was urging new members to gather to Utah, which led these early converts to make emigration plans.
Box Elder, Cache, Salt Lake, Utah, and Sevier counties had large numbers of Danes listed in 19th Century Utah census totals but Sanpete County was the area where the largest number settled.[15]
Growth and development
The Mormons settled in the Salt Lake Valley, which at that time was used as a buffer zone between the Shoshones and the Utes, who were at war.[16] Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons developed and cultivated the arid terrain to make it more suitable. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches and schools. Access to water was crucial. Almost immediately, Young sent out scouting parties to identify and settle additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed in all directions. Church members eventually headed south into present-day Arizona and Mexico, west into California, north into Idaho and Canada, and east into Wyoming, settling many communities in those areas.
Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of
The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the discharged men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron Country, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona. By 1885, Mormon communities were being established in northern Mexico.
Legacy
The Mormon pioneers are celebrated annually on July 24 in the
Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel Database
The Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel gathers information from journals, church history records, and other materials to locate the company in which an ancestor traveled across the plains to get to Utah. This covers known and unknown wagon trains from 1847 to 1868. It contains lists of passengers in companies as well as genealogical information about ancestors. It is the most comprehensive list of Mormon immigrants and the wagon trains that brought them to Utah.[21]
See also
- American pioneer
- Come, Come, Ye Saints (hymn about pioneer migration)
- The Voortrekkers
- Daughters of the Utah Handcart Pioneers
- Daughters of Utah Pioneers
- Hawn's Mill massacre
- History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
- History of the Latter Day Saint movement
- History of Utah
- List of Mormon family organizations
- Mormon Pioneer National Heritage Area
- Mountain Meadows massacre
- Sons of Utah Pioneers
- This Is the Place Heritage Park
Notes
- ^ According to the American Studies researchers involved with the Oregon Trail II game, such wagons had a cargo capacity of about 3,000 pounds and weighed another thousand themselves.[citation needed]
Footnotes
- ^ Oration Delivered by Mr. S. Rigdon on the 4th of July at Far West, Caldwell County, Missouri, 1838
- ^ Dockstader, Julie A. "With the Just We Shall Dwell", Pioneer Magazine, National Society of the Sons of Utah Pioneers, 01 March 1996. Retrieved on 21 June 2020.
- ISBN 0-87480-284-9.
- ^ Aldous JA, Nicholes PS (1997). "What Is Mountain Fever?". Overland Journal. 15 (Spring): 18–23.
- ^ Aldous JA. (1997). "Mountain Fever in the 1847 Mormon Pioneer Companies" (PDF). Nauvoo Journal. 9 (Fall): 52–59.
- ^ Walker and Dant, p. 318
- ^ Slaughter, William and Landon, Michael. "Trail of Hope: The Story of the Mormon Trail". p. 23, 24. Deseret Book Company, Salt Lake City, 1997.
- ^ a b Sonne, Conway B. Ships, Saints, and Mariners: A Maritime Encyclopedia of Mormon Migration, 1830-1890 pages 33. Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 1987
- ^ ISBN 0-8425-0482-6(1930; Hardcover 1965) (out of print)
- ^ Sonne, Conway B. Ships, Saints, and Mariners: A Maritime Encyclopedia of Mormon Migration, 1830-1890 pages 32. Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 1987
- ^ Ship Brooklyn Passenger List
- ^ The Chronicle 12 April 1987 p.7
- ^ The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
- ^ Haslam, Gerald M. (1999). "Scandinavian Emigration History and Sources". Genealogical Journal. 27 (3–4): 100.
- ^ ISBN 0-12-785348-0.
- ^ The Rest of the Story: Latter-day-Saint Relations with Utah-Native-Americans
- ^ a b Utah Historical Quarterly Volume XLVI Open Hand and Mailed Fist: Mormon-Indian Relations in Utah, 1847-52 by Howard A. Christy
- ^ Peace and Violence among 19th-Century Latter-day Saints
- ^ An account of the dialogue of the January 31 meeting can be found in BYC, Microfilm reel 80, box 47, folder 6. Brigham Young is quoted as stating: "I say go [and] kill them... Tell Dimick Huntington to go and kill them—also Barney Ward—let the women and children live if they behave themselves... We have no peace until the men [are] killed off—never treat the Indian as your equal." Wells's Special Order No. 2 can be found in the Utah State Archives, State Capitol, Salt Lake City, Utah Territorial Militia Correspondence, 1849-1863, ST-27, Microfilm reel 1, Document No. 5
- ^ "Lehi High School". Alpine School District. Retrieved September 20, 2012.
- ^ "Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel". The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Retrieved April 21, 2015.
References
- Barney, Ronald O., editor. The Mormon Vanguard Brigade of 1847: Norton Jacob's Record. ISBN 0-87421-609-5.
- ISBN 1-57345-286-6.
- Hafen, Leroy and Ann. "Handcarts to Zion". University of Nebraska Press, 1992.
- ISBN 1-57345-244-0.
- May, Dean L. Utah: A People's History. Bonneville Books, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1987. ISBN 0-87480-284-9.
- Slaughter, William and Landon, Michael. "Trail of Hope: The Story of the Mormon Trail". Deseret Book Company, Salt Lake City, 1997.
- Stegner, Wallace. "The Gathering of Zion". University of Nebraska Press, 1992.
- Walker, Ronald W. and Doris R. Dant, editors, "Nearly Everything Imaginable: the Everyday Life of Utah's Mormon Pioneers." BYU Studies, Provo, Utah 1999.
Further reading
- Arrington, Leonard J. (1994), "Colonization of Utah", Utah History Encyclopedia, University of Utah Press, ISBN 9780874804256, archived from the originalon March 21, 2024, retrieved April 12, 2024
- Esshom, Frank Ellwood (1913), Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, Salt Lake City: Utah Pioneers Book Publishing Company, OCLC 2286984
External links
- churchofjesuschrist.org: Mormon Pioneer Story
- American Westward Migration – online diaries scanned from original Mormon pioneers of the 1850s.
- Byu.edu: Trails of Hope: Diaries of the Mormon Pioneers
- Lds.org: Database of Pioneer Companies and Individuals
- Signaturebooks.com: Excerpt from book about the stranded handcart companies
- Archive.org: Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah – 1913 book by Frank Ellwood Esshom.