Pioneer Stories - James Loader

For 35 years James Loader worked as a gardener for Sir Henry Lambert, a wealthy English nobleman who owned a large estate in Oxfordshire. During most of that time James was foreman of the gardeners and was provided a comfortable home on the estate. There he and his family were treated well and lived in a setting that one of his daughters described as enchanting—a thatched-roof home, a veranda covered with roses and honeysuckles, beautiful gardens, red-brick walkways, and a playground full of amusements. Most of the Loaders' 13 children—nine daughters and four sons—were born on the estate.

The Loader family met the missionaries in 1848. Amy was baptized that year, but James hesitated because Sir Lambert said he would lose his position if he joined the Church. Despite this threat, James was baptized in 1851. Hoping James would reconsider this decision, Sir Lambert gave him one year to give up his new faith. When James declined to comply, his furnishings were moved out of the home, and he was dismissed. James left the estate with great regret, having loved his work, his home, and the people he worked for.

After the Loaders were forced to leave their home on the Lambert estate, they lived for a few years in a small house that one of their adult sons rented for them. Then in December 1855 they went to Liverpool and sailed for America on the John J. Boyd.

James Loader was 56 years old when he left England, Amy 53. Traveling with them were their daughters Patience (age 28), Maria (18), Jane (14), and Sarah (11); their sons John (34) and Robert (9); and John's wife and two children. One daughter had emigrated the previous year, and two others, Zilpah and Tamar, would come six months later. Zilpah was married to John Jaques and had a baby daughter.

Leaving England had its sorrows for the Loaders. The four children who had not joined the Church stayed behind. And 22-year-old Tamar had to leave a young man whom she had hoped would join the Church and come with her. She would have to endure not only a heavy heart but also physical infirmity during the handcart trek; however, she would be blessed in a remarkable, revelatory way for her sacrifice.

Compared to the Horizon six months later, the John J. Boyd had what Patience Loader called "a terrible, severe voyage." The Saints on the Horizon thought their five-week voyage was long, but the Boyd took nine weeks, crossing the Atlantic during the stormy winter months. Whereas only five people died on the Horizon, Patience reported that 62 died on the Boyd. Among them was John Loader's one-year-old daughter. "It did indeed seem very hard to roll her in a blanket and lay her in the big waves and see the little dear go floating away out of sight," wrote Patience, the girl's aunt.

The storms were so bad that the passengers on the Boyd feared for their lives. During the worst storm, Patience had an experience that helped her realize she was remembered of the Lord. She wrote:

"It really seemed sometimes that we would never see land again. One night when we had a bad storm, we could not sleep as we had to hold on to the berths to keep from being thrown out. We were all in the dark. My poor mother was fretting and thought we would all be lost and drowned in the sea. . . . Just when the ship was tossing and rolling the worst, I opened my eyes. We were in darkness, but in a moment . . . a beautiful, lovely figure stood there. . . . The light was so bright around him that I could see the colour of his eyes and hair. . . . As I looked at him, he said, 'Fear not. You shall be taken there all safe.'"

The ship reached New York a few days later.

The John J. Boyd left England three months before the first ship carrying handcart Saints—and six months before the ship that carried most of the Martin company. The story of how the Loaders eventually joined the Martin company takes many unexpected turns that could have broken the family apart but were finally resolved through a declaration of faith. The Loaders expected to travel the first part of the overland journey by train and the last part by wagon. After arriving in New York, they rented rooms and began working so they could save enough money to buy a wagon outfit. James worked as a gardener, some of the daughters sewed in a cloak factory, and some did housekeeping and tended children. After a few weeks in New York, the family received distressing news. Their son-in-law, John Jaques, wrote from England, saying they would be expected to travel by handcart rather than wagon. Patience immediately sent her brother-in-law a letter expressing the family's objections. She felt that pulling a handcart like draft animals would be humiliating. Being limited to only 17 pounds of luggage on the handcart was also objectionable, because it would require the family to leave behind most of their clothes and other possessions. Finally, Patience was emphatic that it would be physically impossible for the family to travel by handcart: "Father and mother think this cannot be done, and I am sure I think the same, for mother cannot walk day after day, and I do not think that any of us will ever be able to continue walking every day. . . . If we girls were strong boys, then I think it might be done, but father is the only man in our family. I don't feel myself that I can go like this. . . . Mother, I am sure, can never go that way. She says herself that she cannot do it."

At a later time Patience explained further why her mother thought the journey would be impossible for her: "My poor mother [was] in delicate health. She had not walked a mile for years." How, then, could Amy Loader not only walk 1,300 miles but pull a handcart? Joining a wagon company seemed the only possible way to complete the journey to Zion. When John Jaques received the letter from Patience, he wrote an indignant reply to his father-in-law, James Loader.  President Franklin D. Richards published both letters in the Millennial Star, feeling that the reply could serve as "an excellent and pertinent rebuke" to others who had reservations about the handcart plan. Word got back to the Loaders that some people who read the letters thought the family was apostatizing. Recalling her father's reaction to this news, Patience wrote:

"One day T. B. H. Stenhouse came from President [John] Taylor's office [in New York]. He said, 'Did you know that your name is in the Millennial Star, Brother Loader? You are thought to be apostatizing from the Church. It says that Father Loader has brought his family out of one part of Babylon and now wants to settle down in another part of Babylon.' This hurt my poor dear father's feelings very much. He said to mother, 'I cannot stand to be accused of apostasy. I will show them better. Mother, I am going to Utah. I will pull the handcart if I die on the road.'"

Within a few days, all family members quit their jobs in New York and started for Iowa City. Soon after the Loaders arrived in Iowa, the large group of Saints who sailed on the Horizon with Edward Martin arrived. Among them were the Loaders' daughters Zilpah and Tamar, as well as Zilpah's husband, John Jaques. The Loader and Jaques families would travel to Utah together as part of the Martin company; however, the Loaders' oldest son, who had already lost a baby daughter at sea, remained in Iowa City because his wife was due to have another baby. It would be another 10 years before his family completed the journey to Utah.

The Loaders were right about the problems they would face. After 100 miles, 22-year-old Tamar became so ill she could no longer walk. Her brother-in-law, John Jaques, pulled her in his handcart the rest of the way to Florence, a distance of 170 miles. By the time the company arrived in Florence, James Loader was also getting weaker and could hardly walk. His daughter Patience recalled: "My poor dear father's health began to fail him, and before we got to Florence he became very weak and sick. His legs and feet began to swell. Some days he was not able to pull the cart, and when we arrived at Florence we put up the tent, made the bed, and he went to bed. We did not think he could live. [He] said he wished to be administered to, and Brother Richards and three other brethren administered to him . . . and told him that he should get better and continue his journey and get to Salt Lake City. This seemed to give him new strength and courage."

When the company left Florence one or two days after this blessing, James Loader tried to help his daughters pull the handcart. Patience recalled the following exchange: "I said, 'Father, you are not able to pull this cart today.' He said, 'Yes I am, my dear. I am better. The brethren blessed me and said I should get well and go to the Valley, and I have faith that I shall.' . . .That afternoon we had not traveled far when my poor sick father fell down and we had to stop to get him up on his feet. I said, 'Father, you are not able to pull the cart. You had better not try to pull. We girls can do it this afternoon.' He said, 'I can do it. I will try it again. I must not give up. The brethren said I shall be better, and I want to go to the Valley to shake hands with Brigham Young.' So we started on again. We had not traveled far before he fell down again. He was weak and worn down. We got him up again, but we told him he could not pull the cart again that day. So my sister Maria came and worked with me inside the shafts, and Jane and Sarah pulled on the rope until we got into camp."

Early the next morning Zilpah Jaques, the Loaders' daughter who was married to John Jaques, gave birth to a son. Soon after sunrise, Captain Martin came to tell the family to prepare to leave with the rest of the company. Zilpah and her baby lay on quilts on one side of the tent, and Tamar lay on the other, neither of them able to move. "Put them up on the wagon," Captain Martin said, referring to the wagon that carried the sick. Patience asked if one of the sisters could ride with them to help, but Captain Martin denied the request. "[Then] we will stay here for a day or two and take care of our two sick sisters," Patience told him.

The Martin company moved out, leaving the Loader and Jaques families behind. That evening James Loader and John Jaques built a big fire and kept it going all night to keep the wolves away. "I never heard such terrible howling of wolves in my life," Patience recalled. The next morning these families, still weak, packed their handcarts to try to catch up with the company. John Jaques could no longer carry Tamar on his cart because his wife and two small children needed to ride. So Tamar rode on the cart that Patience and her sisters pulled. These women who had been so sure they could not walk across the plains, much less pull a handcart, were learning more each day about what they could really do.

They would have some unexpected help that day in catching up with their company. The fire that had kept the wolves away was so bright that emigration leaders could see it as a nightglow on the sky from the vicinity of Florence. Some of these leaders went to investigate, and one of them was moved by compassion when he saw the condition of this beleaguered family. Historian Wallace Stegner relates: "William Cluff . . . was so troubled to see the frail father and the women pulling the two sick [women] and two small children that he hitched on with his lariat and gave each of the two handcarts a long boost along the road before he had to ride back. Twenty-two miles from [Florence], at two in the morning, after being threatened by five Indians and frightened by coarse squatters and by the wolves that howled all that moonlit night, this family of the ill and the incompetent caught up with the rest of the company, went to bed on a supper of water gruel, and rose after two or three hours of sleep to tug their carts through another day of Platte valley sand."

James Loader's health improved slightly for the next two or three weeks, but then it began to fail again. On September 23 he walked 17 miles. At camp that night he couldn't even raise himself to go into the tent. The next morning while Patience was preparing him some gruel, she heard an urgent call from the tent: "My sister Zilpah called, 'Patience, come quick! Our father is dying.' When I got into the tent, my poor mother and all our family [were] kneeling on the ground around him. Poor, dear father, realizing he had to leave us, [was] too weak to talk to us. He looked at us all with tears in his eyes, then he said to mother with great difficulty, 'You know I love my children.' Then he closed his eyes. These were the last words he ever said."

James Loader fell unconscious. A leader in the company said to put him on a sick wagon, but again the family's request to ride on the wagon to care for a loved one was denied. Instead of separating themselves from him, the Loaders carried him on their handcart that day. Patience recalled: "That was a terrible day never to be forgotten by us, and poor father dying on the handcart. He did not seem to suffer much pain. He never opened his eyes after he closed them in the morning. It was a great comfort to us all that we had him with us on the cart. . . .The brethren came to administer to Father in the afternoon. They . . . knew he was dying. They said, 'We will seal Father Loader up to the Lord, for He alone is worthy of him. He has done his work, been a faithful servant in the Church, and we the servants of God seal him unto God, our Father.' To our surprise, my dear father said 'Amen' so plain that we could understand him."  At 11:15 that night, September 24, James Loader passed away, fulfilling his vow that he would pull a handcart even if he died on the road. He had traveled 381 miles—a full month—since those unsteady steps from Florence.

James Loader was buried the next morning. Without time or materials to make a coffin, the family wrapped his body in a quilt. After the Saints sang "The Resurrection Day," the grave was dedicated and the company moved on. Patience recalled the family's grief and hope:  "I will never forget the sound of that dirt being shoveled onto my poor father's body. . . . It did indeed seem a great trial to have to leave our dear father behind that morning, knowing we had looked upon that sweet smiling face for the last time on earth, but not without hope of meeting him again on the morning of the resurrection. . . .Brother Daniel Tyler came to us and tried to comfort us by telling us that our father was a faithful, true servant of God. . . . He said father had laid down his life for the gospel's sake. He had died a martyr to the truth. . . . Of course, this was all very comforting to us, but it did not bring our dear father back to us."

As long as James Loader had strength, he would come into camp at night and begin making tent pins. This may seem a small matter, but it reveals much about James Loader. He made the pins because he anticipated the winter storms. Not certain he would live long enough to help his family through them, he did what he could while he was alive. Thus, when he gave his daughters a full bag of tent pins shortly before he died, they knew they were holding evidence of his love—and a good-bye gift. His daughter Patience recalled: "He said to us girls, 'I have made you lots of tent pins because when the cold weather comes you will not be able to make [them], your hands will be so cold.' By this we knew that he would not live the journey through, and he also grieved to know that mother and we girls would not have anyone to help us make a home or help us to make a living. . . . He had always been a good, kind husband and father."

John Jaques, the ever-reliable record keeper, did not record his feelings about his father-in-law's death. He surely loved his father-in-law and mourned his loss, but he records his death in the same documentary tone he used for others in the company: "James Loader, age 57, Aston Rowant Branch, Warwickshire Conference, died of diarrhea at 11 P.M., buried west side of sandhill, 13 miles east of Ash Hollow."

In the reminiscence he wrote 22 years later, John Jaques paid tribute to his father-in-law: "He was confident almost to the last that he should reach 'the valley,' and his chief solicitude was for his wife, who, he feared, would not be able to endure the journey. But she . . . endured it bravely, although it made her a sorrowing widow. She [is] still a widow, for she could never believe there was a man left in the world equal to her husband."

I loved reading the story of the Loader family this week.  (Part 2  in a few days about the rest of their journey.)  I think James Loader was a great example of obedience.  He knew in his heart that he could not survive the journey by handcart, but when his leaders asked him to be obedient, he was - regardless of the price that his obedience would exact from his family. He was a great example of faith in his leaders and love for his family as well.  Dallin H. Oaks said, "It is not enough to study or enact the accomplishments of our pioneers. We need to identify the great, eternal principles they applied to achieve all they achieved for our benefit and then apply those principles to the challenges of our day.  In that way we honor their pioneering efforts, and we also reaffirm our heritage and strengthen its capacity to bless our own posterity and "those millions of our Heavenly Father's children who have yet to hear and accept the gospel of Jesus Christ." We are all pioneers in doing so."  

Have a great week!

Sister McHood