Pioneer Stories - Emily & Julia Hill - Sisters in Zion

Emily and Julia Hill (Willie Company)

 Emily and Julia Hill, ages 20 and 23, were sisters who overcame great obstacles to join the Church and then gather to Zion. Emily tells how her preparation to hear the gospel began when she was young:

"When but a mere child I was much concerned about my eternal salvation and felt that I would make any sacrifice to obtain it. I asked all kinds of questions of my mother and sisters, seeking how to be saved, but could get no satisfaction from them nor from the religious body to which they belonged."

Similar to Joseph Smith, in her youth Emily searched the scriptures for answers to her questions, "waiting for something, I knew not what." Her wait ended at age 12 when a cousin came to visit. Emily welcomed the visit because she expected to have some fun, but her cousin was "too full of a 'new religion' to do anything but preach." The next Sunday her cousin invited the family to a meeting that was being held in a village five miles away. Emily's family all declined, her brothers because of the distance and her sisters because they felt too respectable to attend a meeting "of such a primitive sect." Laughing, Emily's sisters told her father, "Send Em, she will tell us all about it." Emily went, walking both ways. The meeting was held in a small house, and as the members bore their testimonies, Emily was touched by the Spirit and felt that she had found the truth. "It was indeed as though I had been brought 'out of darkness into marvelous light,'" she said.

Overjoyed at finding what she had so long desired, Emily could hardly wait to get home to tell her family and friends. As soon as she entered the house, she said, "I astounded them all by the emphatic declaration that I knew the Latter-Day Saints were the right people and I would join them as soon as I was big enough." This report displeased her parents, as they had been prejudiced against the Church. "I was never sent to 'take notes' of the Mormons again," Emily said, "but on the contrary was closely watched lest I should be led away."

Emily showed remarkable strength in staying true to her convictions even though her parents refused to consent to her baptism. Criticized by those who said she was too young to judge such matters, she studied the scriptures so she could defend her faith. Within her family, Emily felt alone in her beliefs for some time until a missionary came to her home and bore such a powerful testimony that her older sister, Julia, wanted to join the Church. From that time on, Emily said, "I had a friend in the family, and we were both determined that cost what it might we would be true to the light within us."

Emily and Julia were baptized in 1852, when Emily was 16 and Julia nearly 19. Soon after her baptism, Julia moved to Northampton, and a while later Emily went to visit her. Describing her time in Northampton, Emily wrote, "For the first time I enjoyed religious freedom, and there also I took my lessons of hard times, preparing me for greater hardships in store."

Both sisters earnestly desired to gather to Zion, and both worked until they had earned enough money to emigrate. Despite their parents' objections, in May 1856 they joined the Saints on the Thornton. Eight years after Emily Hill had first heard the gospel, she was finally going to Zion.

They sailed to America in 1856 aboard the Thornton and became members of the Willie Handcart Company in Iowa City, Iowa. These very pretty single girls were given inducements from residents to cut their journey short across the 300 miles of trail through Iowa. Weeks later in their journey, soldiers at Ft. Laramie also tried to persuade the young women to stay, but Emily and Julia persevered despite the shortened rations and coming winter storms.

Of the endless walking, Emily recalled:

"My sister broke down and was unable to walk, and I remember asking myself (footsore and weary with the first week of walking and working) if it was possible for me, faith or no faith, to walk twelve hundred miles further. The flesh certainly was weak but the spirit was willing."

The girls had volunteered to assist a young new widow, Martha Campkin, with her five small children. It was the only way Captain Willie would allow Martha to join the company. Martha and her little ones all arrived safely in the Valley of their hopes. When Julia’s health broke down on the trail, Emily and friends pulled her in the handcart. In a blizzard on October 23, 1856, Julia collapsed from hunger and exhaustion at the summit of Rocky Ridge. It was Emily who lifted her from the snow and got her going again. Both girls survived and raised large families.

Brother Halliday had given Emily a Priesthood blessing before she left England in which he prophesied "she should write in prose and in verse and thereby comfort the hearts of thousands." Emily’s life fulfilled this promise and she was hailed by Orson F. Whitney as the "possessor of a poetic as well as a practical mind . . . Her busy pen has brought forth many meritorious productions." Emily is best recognized today as the author of the words to "As Sisters in Zion." (hymn 309) Originally 10 stanzas long and titled, "Song of the Sisters of the Female Relief Society."  (On a personal note: I love that the original verbage of the song reads, "As sisters in Zion we'll all PULL together")

Having left a situation of wealth, education and privilege in England for the sake of their newly embraced faith, one verse from Emily’s original hymn reflects the lifelong efforts of both of the Hill sisters:

"The Lord hath established the cities of Zion, The poor of His people are trusting in Him, He makes us a source for His poor to rely on; Oh! Shall we not brighten the eyes that are dim."

Emily and Julia both survived the journey. Three months after arriving in Utah, each married a man who had helped with the rescue. At least 15 other women in the Willie and Martin companies also married rescuers.

Julia became a plural wife of Israel Ivins. In 1861 they were called by Brigham Young to move south to help settle Utah's Dixie. Their wagon was one of the first to set camp in St. George. Many trials attended this assignment, but Julia endured them well. Of her eight children, four died in infancy.

Emily married William G. Mills, but her marriage was not happy. After three years, William went on a mission to England, leaving Emily and one small child. After he had been away four years, during which time Emily struggled to provide for herself and her child, he sent word that he was not returning home. Stung by this rejection, Emily wrote, "No one can realize what such an ordeal is, unless they have passed through it. All that I had hitherto suffered seemed like child's play compared to being deserted by one in whom I had chosen to place the utmost confidence."

In addition to the rejection, Emily was nearly destitute in the Zion she had sacrificed so much to come to: "Hard times stared me in the face, and I was almost overwhelmed. . . . I could not see how I should ever be able to keep 'the wolf from the door.' To add to my trouble, the house I occupied (and to which I had been led to believe I had some claim), was sold over my head, and thus I had the prospect of being homeless, at a time when rents were going up double and treble. One night when I was so weary with overwork and anxiety, pondering what to do, these words impressed me as if audibly spoken: "Trust in God and Thyself." Immediately Emily arose and composed four stanzas of poetry on that theme. With renewed faith, she soon found a way open up to resolve these problems.

Emily remarried in 1864 as a plural wife of Joseph Woodmansee, with whom she had eight children. Emily and Joseph suffered many setbacks and misfortunes, but both remained steadfast in the faith. Emily's most heartfelt desire was for her children to develop that same faith:

"I fervently hope that each and all of them may seek and obtain for themselves a knowledge of the truth (called Mormonism), for I know it can make them wise unto salvation, and may they be willing if needs be to endure reproach and privation for principle's sake. I doubt not that all my troubles have been for my good, and today I am more than thankful for my standing in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints."

Given what Emily had been told about Zion before leaving England, and given what she sacrificed to gather there, it would have been reasonable for her to hope to find a kind of utopia where everyone was of one heart, where there were no poor, where everyone lived their beliefs. It is doubtful that she expected such realities as a brutal pilgrimage, fledgling settlements with scarce supplies, a husband who would desert her, and neighbors and landlords who were, at best, insensitive to her needs for the essentials of life.

Despite this disparity between hope and reality, Emily Hill remained true to the testimony she had first felt burn in her heart in a small home in England when she was 12 years old. Rather than become disillusioned, she seemed to understand that building Zion was a process. Far from a utopia where a person could just walk in and live happily ever after, Zion was a place where people were working out their salvation. They had flaws and imperfections, but the Lord was using them anyway in building his kingdom—as he always does.