History - The First Rescue

The Perpetual Emigration Fund, established in 1850, brought 50,000 saints to Zion. The funds were contributed by American saints and used to bring foreign converts to the West. The emigrants then settled in Utah and worked to repay the Fund. In 1855, cricket clouds replaced rain clouds and the harvest was cut in half. Tithing and Perpetual Emigration donations were reduced to a mere trickle. Brigham Young announced that a lack of funds should not, and could not limit the passage of saints to Zion. This proclamation, coupled with the prevailing economic situation, created a demand for a cheaper mode of transportation.

In 1855, the Church leaders officially introduced the handcart plan.

"Let all things be done in order, and let all the saints who can, gather up for Zion and come while the way is open before them. Let the poor also come, let them come on foot, with handcarts or wheelbarrows, let them gird up their loins and walk through, and nothing shall hinder or stay them."

Brigham Young estimated that the saints could cover 15 miles a day initially, and would increase their mileage to 20, 25, even 30 miles per day, completing the journey in 90 days. Brigham Young went on to assert that:

"The system of ox-trains is too slow and expensive, and must give way to the telegraph line of handcarts and wheelbarrows. It would be much more economical both in time, labor, and expense. On the arrival of a company of saints on the frontier, they could have the necessary handcarts ready and load them and be 200 or 300 miles on their Journey, with the same time and labor that would otherwise be expended in getting started. It is only to those who have traveled the plains with ox-teams that the advantages of doing without them will appear in all their force. They alone can realize what it is to get up on a sultry morning, spend an hour or two in driving up and yoking unruly cattle, and while waiting to start, hear that some brother has an ox missing, then another hour, or perhaps half a day is wasted and finally, when ready to start, the pleasant time for traveling is past, during which a company of handcarts would have performed the greater part of an ordinary day's journey."

Showered with promises, the plan was also soaked in reality. President Richards warned the saints that:

"It is our constant desire not to mislead the saints concerning the difficulties of the journey to Utah. We wish them calmly to make up their minds that it is not an easy task, and to start with faith, trusting in Israel's God of success, and seek of him constantly, by prayer and supplication.”

The group who stood anxiously on the dock at Liverpool waiting to board ships to America shared two things in common. They were converts to the Mormon Church dreaming of going to Zion and they couldn't afford wagons to get there. Instead they would discard their precious things, strip their belongings to the bare bones and pull handcarts to Zion. As the wind swept across their assorted bundles and bedding, Margaret and Samuel Pucell didn't shrink before the arduous journey ahead. They had already tasted sacrifice for the gospel they loved, had even sent their children hungry to bed many times to feed the missionaries--and they had waited 19 years scraping the money together to leave.

But now ahead lay Zion. O Zion, dear Zion. Little did they know when they joined the Martin Handcart Company, that their journey would be plagued by excruciating difficulties they could not surmount. They would both die and be buried on the plains of a foreign country before they saw Zion and their ten year-old daughter, Nellie, would spend a lifetime waddling on bleeding, festering stumps after losing her frozen legs in an untimely winter storm in the Wyoming mountains.
Their life stories and those of hundreds of others were written in a series of misfortunes beginning with their tardy departure from England. The 764 passengers who would become the Willie company didn't leave until May 4, the Martin company were not underway until May 25 and then when they arrived in Iowa City, ready to thrust into the wilderness, they would be disappointed to learn they had to wait another three weeks because their handcarts were not yet ready.
Delay at Iowa City
Pulitzer Prize winner Wallace Stegner describes the handcart pioneers, "In all its history, the American West never saw a more unlikely band of pioneers than the four hundred-odd who were camped on the banks of the Iowa river at Iowa City in June 1856. They were not colorful--only improbable. Looking for the brown and resolute and weather-seasoned among them, you would have seen instead starved cheeks, pale skins, bad teeth, thin chests, all the stigmata of unhealthy work and inadequate diet. There were more women than men, more children under fifteen than either...Most of them, until they were herded from their crowded immigrant ship and loaded into the cars and rushed to the end of the Rock Island Line and dumped here at the brink of the West had never pitched a tent, slept on the ground, cooked outdoors, built a campfire. They had not even the rudimentary skills that make frontiersmen." Yet, they had grit and faith, and in the weeks ahead when they were tested beyond human endurance, they would prove themselves well.
Of the handcarts constructed during that tedious three-week wait in Iowa City, John Chislett noted, "They were made in a hurry, some of them of very insufficiently seasoned timber, and strength was sacrificed to weight until the production was a fragile structure, with nothing to recommend it but lightness." Still, as the Willie Company left Iowa City July 16, they were hopeful. They signed their carts with slogans like the "Merry Mormons", they laughed together in the evenings around the campfire and they organized themselves according to a set of strict rules not only because it was the Mormon way, but also to safeguard against their own greenness.
If they were destitute before, they felt more so now. Five people shared a handcart and each of them were limited to 17 pounds of luggage, which amounted to a scanty, shivering allowance of bedding and clothing, all the flimsy carts could handle. They couldn't have carried more, even if the people as they lumbered across the plains could have hauled more.
Ann Rowley whose family had lost everything after they joined the Church lamented, "There were many keepsakes that I wanted to take, but I couldn't. But there was one thing I didn't consider a luxury and that was my feather bed. I had hung onto that beloved item from the time of the auction in England and now clearly there was no room for it. It wouldn't be bad to walk 1300 miles if one had a feather-bed to sleep on at night, but no matter how I folded it, it was too bulky... But a featherbed is a featherbed and when it came to choosing between Zion and a feather bed, well it was a little too late to turn my back on Zion, so I ripped it open and emptied the feathers on the ground and used the tick to cover the supplies on the handcart."
Last Chance to Postpone
The Willie Company arrived in Florence, Nebraska August 18, the last outpost of civilization before they started across the plains and also a last chance to postpone the trip until spring. They debated about it, heard Levi Savage who had taken this journey many times before plead with them through tears to stop for the winter. They didn't. Perhaps they had already waited too long to join the Saints to hear the sense in Savage's words. They stopped long enough to repair wagons, add another 98 pound bag of flour to each cart and were on their way, pulling carts that with every step felt heavier.
Each day they made from ten to twenty miles, drawing ever further away from civilization into a landscape more arid and strange to their European eyes. Their shoes wore thin, their hands became blistered and their muscles ached at the end of long days of exertion. Levi Savage noted, "The flour on some carts draws very hard." More than they could have ever anticipated, their green lumber carts were a plague. Sand pilled settled in the axles and ground down the wood, until wheels fell apart. Some of the travelers cut up their boots and nailed the leather to the worn axles, they had no lubricant, so they dipped into their small supply of bacon and sop to grease their wheels. This only served to worsen their situation as the lubricant attracted more sand to quicken the sanding process.
John Chislett noted, "When a cart collapsed it was difficult for the owner to see the long line move on without him while he remained behind with a few crude tools, struggling to repair the damage."
New Disaster
In the first week of September came an additional stroke of disaster as the pioneers looked to see what appeared to be a storm coming from the southwest. Soon it was accompanied by the pounding of hooves as a herd of buffalo stampeded, turning just before it reached camp. However, it ignited some primordial wild streak in their cattle, and thirty of the pioneers' head joined the stampede. Though the men tried to follow them the next morning, their footprints had become obliterated in a rain storm. In a desperate two-day search for the cattle, they found nothing, heard nothing. What they had lost were the oxen that pulled their supply wagons, and they had no choice but to yoke up their beef cattle and milk cows. In a single accident they lost their milk and beef, and the remaining broken teams could not pull the hefty wagons. "The Saints, recognizing the need to get on wearily accepted another sack of flour each for their handcarts, and the thin column again moved off across the sandy plain."
The progress was slow, breakdowns were frequent and exasperating. As they bowed their heads, eyes fixed, they trudged across Nebraska's 500 miles of vast, monotonous, prairie. On dry days, they could taste the dust thrown up from the carts before them, on rainy days they could make little headway through the mud. Levi Savage's journal through the rest of September reads like a compendium of misery. “September 17: The heavy sand made our progress very slow and extremely laborious. Several were obliged to leave their carts and they with the infirmed, could scarcely get into camp. September 18: At dinner Sister Reade...was missing. She is not in camp and no one knows where she is. September 21: Sister Season's little boy, two years old, died at eleven o'clock last night. September 22: Brother Empy departed this life at half past one p.m. He has been having the ague for some time past, but no one thought him dangerous. September 23: The Saints slow in rising and getting breakfast early. September 26: Today we traveled fourteen miles without water. Sister Ann Briant, who had been ill for some time, but not thought dangerous, was found dead in the wagon in a sitting posture, apparently asleep. Sept. 27: The old appear to be failing consistently.”
Reduced Rations
Hunger stalked the trail with the handcart companies, their pound of flour ration a day inadequate to fill gnawing stomachs. Dysentery added to the ache and weakness. The longer they stayed on the plains, the more their energy flagged and the hungrier they grew. Patience Loader said, "You felt as if you could almost eat a rusty nail or gnaw a file. You were ten times as hungry as a hunter; yea, as ten hunters, all the long day, and every time you woke up in the night. Eating was the grand passion of the pedestrian on the plains, an insatiable passion, for he never got enough to eat." Ann Rowley noted, "It hurt me to see my children go hungry. I watched as they cut the loose rawhide from the cart wheels, roasted off the hair and chew the hide."
For some the weakness from hunger and exertion gradually overtook them. In the Martin Handcart Company, Patience Loader's father, James, came to the day when he collapsed as he pulled the cart. Patience said, "'Father, you are not able to pull the cart. You had better not try to pull. We girls can do it this afternoon.' 'Oh,' he said “...I must not give up...I want to go to the valley to shake hands with Brigham Young.'" That day his daughters pulled the cart, and that night Patience's sister Zilpha groaned in childbirth, delivering an infant son while her sister Tamar was put to bed with Rocky Mountain spotted fever, her face hot with disease. The company had to move on, while the Loaders stoked all-night fires, a glow against the prairie darkness, to protect themselves against the roving wolves.
Not long after, James could pull no more and looking at his family with tears in his eyes, said with great difficulty, "You know I love my children." These were his last words. Of Jame's burial, Patience wrote, "We had to wrap my dear father in a quilt, all we had to wrap him in. No nice casket to lay him away in comfortable, but put into the grave and the earth thrown in upon his poor body. Oh, that sounded so hard I will never forget the sound of that dirt being shoveled onto my poor father's body. It seemed to me that it would break every bone in his body. It did indeed seem a great trial to have to leave our dear father behind that morning, knowing we had looked upon his sweet, smiling face for the last time on earth; but not without a hope of meeting him again on the morning of the resurrection."
Bitter Wyoming
Ironically, in some miserable law of diminishing returns, just as more was required of them, the way grew harder. At Fort Laramie, they weren't able to get the quantity of supplies they needed and it was clear to Captain James Willie and Levi Savage that their supplies would be completely exhausted while they were yet 350 miles from the valley. With the willingness and unanimity of the Saints, it was resolved to reduce their allowance from a pound to 12 ounces of flour per day; at Independence Rock, this amount would be further cut so that working men received 12 ounces, women and old men nine ounces and children from four to eight ounces.
Beyond Fort Laramie and into the Black Hills, the road grew steeper, rockier and more rutted, wreaking havoc upon their fragile carts. For many, the laden carts became so difficult to pull that they dumped articles of clothing and bedding to be burned along the way, a sacrifice that made carts lighter, but left them shivering as the nights evolved from chilly to freezing. Elder Richards had left them 37 buffalo robes along the Platte, and even most of these had to be surrendered as weight too much to bear.
As the pioneers traveled up Wyoming's Sweetwater, the severity of the nights increased. John Chislett wrote, "Nearly all suffered more or less at night from cold. Instead of getting up in the morning strong, refreshed vigorous and prepared for the hardships of another day of toil, the poor Saints were to be seen crawling out from their tents looking haggard, benumbed, and showing an utter lack of that vitality so necessary to our success. Cold weather, scarcity of good, lassitude and fatigue from over-exertion, soon produced their effects. Our old and infirm people began to droop, and they no sooner lost their spirit and courage than death's stampe could be traced upon their features. Life went out as smoothly as a lamp ceases to burn when the oil is gone.
"Death was not long confined in its ravages to the old and infirm, but the young and naturally strong were among its victims. Men who were, so to speak, as strong as lions when we started on our journey, and who had been our best supports, were compelled to succumb to the grim monster. These men were worn down by hunger, scarcity of clothing and bedding, and too much labor in helping their families.” Chislett, himself single, wrote, "It was surprising to an unmarried man to witness the devotion of men to their families and to their faith, under these trying circumstances. Many a father pulled his cart, with his little children on it, until the day preceding his death. I have seen some pull their carts in the morning, give out during the day, and die before next morning...These people died with the calm faith and fortitude of martyrs. Their greatest regret seemed to be leaving their families behind them, and their bodies on the plains or mountains instead of being laid in the consecrated ground of Zion."
First Rescue
Day after day through the high country of what would become Wyoming they marched on in misery and sorrow, trudged like zombies as the shrill wind first pierced their flesh and then their bones and their exhaustion overtook them like the sea takes a drowning man. Then came the bleak, October morning near the Fifth Crossing of the Sweetwater when the cutting wind held more than cold; it was snow that came in blustery torrents. This day, too they were issued their last ration of flour. What was left were only six scrawny beef and 400 pounds of biscuits to provision 400 people and the valley was still three hundred miles away.
Afraid to stop, they still had enough faith to push on. Then at noon, pausing to rest, they looked up to see something coming toward them, a joyous sight, whose timing they took as the kindness of the Lord. It was a little, light express wagon driven by Joseph A. Young and Stephen Taylor, sent ahead to tell the immigrants that they would soon be delivered. A rescue team followed them not far behind.
That a rescue team was coming at all was thanks to Brigham Young's insight. Elder Franklin D. Richards and a group of missionaries returning from England had passed the handcart pioneers on their way to the valley, and once in Salt Lake had gone immediately on October 4 to Brigham Young to tell him that 1200 people were still out on the plains. Until this time he had thought that the handcart company which had arrived in Salt Lake just two days before had been the last one on the trail for the season. With great alarm, he began rescue plans that very evening and told the Saints assembled in the Bowery the next day for General Conference, "I will now give this people the subject and the text..during the Conference, it is this...Many of our brethren and sisters are the Plains with handcarts, and probably many are now seven hundred miles from this place, and they must be brought here. We must send assistance to them. The text wil be---to get them here!"
"I shall call upon the Bishops this day, I shall not wait until tomorrow, nor until thenext day, for sixty good mule teams and twelve or fifteen wagons. I do not want to send oxen. I want good horses and mules. ..I will tel you that your faith, religion and profession of religion will never save one soul of you in the celestial kingdom of our God, unless you carry out just such principles as I am now teaching you. Go and bring in those people now on the Plains, and attend strictly to those things which we call temporal, or temporal duties, otherwise your faith will be in vain."
The Saints did not know these people on the plains, they had not felt their anguish or chewed on the bark of trees for relief from hunger pain, but they loved the Lord and they understood something of sacrifice and compassion, and their response to Brigham's call was immediate. Women stripped off their petticoats and stockings right in the tabernacle and surrendered shawls to be packed into the wagons. Even though it was time for the fall planting of the winter wheat crop and it had been a lean year in the valley, men stepped forward to the pulpit to volunteer for the mission. The evening of October 6, the volunteers gathered in Brigham Young's office for counsel and priesthood blessings and the next day the wagons were rolling out of town, already laden with provisions the bishops had collected.
By the time the rescue teams found the Willie camp, it was covered in a foot of snow and more people had died and been buried in a shallow, common grave. The rescue teams had expected to find misery, but the cries of starving children, the gaunt desperation of parents who had no way to help them, was more than they could have conceived. Chislett describes the relief of the handcart pioneers when the rescue teams arrived, "The news ran through the camp like wildfire, and all who were able to leave their beds turned out enmasse to see them. A few strong men wept till tears ran freely down their furrowed and sunburnt cheeks, and little children partook of the joy...and fairly danced around with gladness. Restraint was set aside in the general rejoicing, and as the brethren entered our camp, the sisters fell upon them and deluged them with kisses...That evening for the first time in quite a period, the songs of Zion were to be heard in the camp, and peals of laughter issued from the little knots of people as they chatted around the fires."
A Howling Blizzard
However much excitement they caused, twenty or so wagons full of food and clothing and a refreshed group of young men did not mark the end of the ordeal. On October 23, they awoke to a biting blizzard and what many of them would later describe as the worst day of their lives. This was the ascent of the highest point on the Mormon trail at 7300 feet, the killer known as Rocky Ridge. This windswept backbone of ragged rock was a rite of passage. Those who had the physical stamina to withstand the piercing wind, the jagged rocks hidden under the snow, the debility from weeks of malnutrition would probably make it all the way to the valley. But many would fall here.
It was a ragtag group with thin clothes and worn shoes that started that five-mile climb up Rocky Ridge, shoving, pushing their carts, many who finally sat down by the side of the road, unable to push any farther through the knee-deep snow. The wagons were so over loaded with the sick and debilitated that Levi Savage "was fearful some would smother."
In getting into camp that night, eleven year-old James Kirkwood was responsible for his four year old brother Joseph, carrying the little boy on his back as he slogged through the snow on frozen feet. His widowed mother could not help for she, with his brother, Robert, were pulling their crippled, 19 year-old brother Thomas and their meager belongings, on a cart that barely budged. Faithful to his charge and dutiful to the end, James staggered into camp with his precious load, put Joseph down by the fire and died, trying to get to Zion, of exposure and overexertion.
Else Nielsen could not care for her six-year old son Niels because she had to pull her husband, whose feet had badly frozen, in the cart. Instead, little nine-year old Bodil Mortensen, a Danish child who was planning to meet her older sister in the valley, was put in charge. She labored to get Niels to camp, then began gathering sage to build a fire, and exhausted, leaned against a cart wheel and died with the sage still in her hands.
It was an hour when sacrifice was called for and sacrifice was delivered, when the basest in human nature could have triumphed as each scrambled for survival, but instead each, at the peril of life, considered his fellows. As the blizzard raged that night John Linford's wife took off her own flannel petticoat and tucked it around him. It was not enough to save him and he died before morning.
The next morning Chislett had the unhappy task of gathering the dead, "thirteen corpses, all stiffly frozen." They were buried in the clothes they died in, laid in a shallow, common grave covered with willows and then earth and rocks to keep the wolves from disturbing them. Two, who helped dig the graves, died that day and were buried nearby.
From Rock Creek on, the way was easier. On 25 October, they approached South Pass where they met seven fresh teams and provision wagons. At Green River, ten more wagons came to rescue them and from the time they left Fort Bridger about fifty wagons were assisting them and they were able to discard their handcarts and ride. They arrived in Salt Lake City on a sunny November 9, a different group than had left England, marked and transformed by suffering. The Martin Company followed some weeks later, having known even worse.
Years later, an old man summed up his experience as a member of the handcart company, "We suffered beyond anything you can imagine and many died of exposure and starvation, but did you ever hear a survivor of that company utter a word of criticism? No one of that company ever apostatized or left the church because every one of us came through with the absolute knowledge that God lives for we became acquainted with Him in our extremities."

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MARTINS COVE

On the 19th of October 1856, the Martin Handcart Company crossed the North Platte River, perhaps at Bessemer Bend-about six miles southwest of present-day Casper, Wyoming. That was the day the big snow storm hit. They pulled up the bluff, a little less than a mile above the river, and camped for the night. There was no fuel for a fire, they were cold, their clothes were wet and frozen, most of the tents were frozen, the ground was frozen, many just crawled into the tents on the ground for protection for the night. As many as 13 died of exposure before morning. The next day, they traveled about five miles up toward a small hill on which were some trees—they still had to go about 1/2 mile from camp for firewood. The storm continued—it was impossible to travel; the snow was up to 12 inches deep—the temperature was below zero--plus the Wyoming winds. The conditions continued until the 28 of October. On October 28, 1856, three men on horseback arrived in camp. These men had been sent on ahead of the main rescue party to find where the Martin Company was and to assess their condition. It was reported to these men that 56 people had died since they had crossed the North Platte River. One of these men was Daniel W. Jones. The message from the men was that provisions were near and that the Company was to increase rations again to a pound of flour for each person. If there were enough cattle left to kill, each person was to be given a pound of beef. They were told they must continue on tomorrow-they could not wait there—they had to go meet the wagons (which were 55 miles away at Devil’s Gate). The next day they traveled eight miles and camped at the Avenue of Rocks. Daniel W. Jones reported, “The train was strung out for three or four miles. There were old men pulling and tugging their carts, sometimes loaded with a sick wife or children—women pulling along sick husbands, little children struggling through the mud and snow. There were two of us and hundreds needing help. What could we do? This was a bitter cold night—several died.” During the next two days they pulled the handcarts 17 miles.  Meanwhile Daniel W. Jones and his companions rode back to Devil’s Gate to inform the men with the supply wagons that they had found the handcart people. They immediately moved out and met the handcart company near Greasewood Creek (present day Horse Creek). The boys from the Valley had large fires going and helped pitch the tents and provided a meal. The next day, November 1, they traveled on to Independence Rock. On November 2nd, they arrived at the stockade at Devil's Gate. A fort/trading post had been built near Devil’s Gate in 1851, but it had been abandoned in 1856, so there was no one around when the handcart companies arrived. George W. Grant, the 18 year old son of Captain Grant knocked down one of the cabins to provide firewood. It was 11 degrees below zero, there were 12-16 inches of snow, with drifts deeper than that, and a bitter wind was blowing. Thirteen more people died that night. A council was held. “Do we try and survive the winter here or do we try to get to the Valley?”  Another storm was coming. Two-thirds of the handcart people could walk no further. The only way to save them was to empty the wagons of the Hunt and Hodgett wagon trains and use them along with those from the Valley to carry the survivors. [The Hunt and Hodgett trains were hauling freight to Salt Lake City and were following the Martin Company. They were also hauling nearly 400 immigrants.] But they knew they had to get the people to shelter from the storm. On November 4, the Martin Company was taken about 3 miles to the Cove for protection from the winds, and the availability of firewood. (The Cove is a small valley between a large sand dune and the rock mountain.) As they came to the Sweetwater River, many, remembering the terrible experience crossing the North Platte River fell to the ground and sobbed saying, “We cannot do that.” Four young men stepped into the river. Nobody told them they had to do that— they felt it in their hearts. They were told many times to get out of the water; that if they stayed in it they would die. They stayed in the River a good part of the day and carried most of the Martin Company people across to the other side. Brigham Young, a prophet of God, later said that because of what they did in those few hours they had already earned all of the blessings the Father had.

Although the Cove helped some during the four days and five nights the Martin Company were there waiting out the storm, it was still very cold and many more would lose their lives — approximately 50-60. There are many special stories of their experiences while at the Cove. However, the great miracle of the Martin Company was that any of them made it from the last crossing of the North Platte River through Martin's Cove alive.  For over two weeks, these people had been losing loved ones, struggling to survive and have the strength to carry on. Many of them were near death. Our Heavenly Father allowed them to suffer in ways we can hardly speak or write about. Could Heavenly Father have prevented them from being in this situation? Of course he could have. Heavenly Father knew the type of people they were, and He knew they would be obedient. When someone asked President Hinckley why our Father in Heaven allowed it to happen, he said the primary reason was for us today. He said, “It is good to look to the past to gain appreciation for the present and perspective for the future. It is good to look upon the virtues of those who have gone before, to gain strength for whatever lies ahead.” President Hinckley also said it is up to us that, “those who here perished will not have died in vain." Our Father in Heaven allowed the Handcart Pioneers to suffer that we today might more clearly see our responsibilities. It also helps us to see our responsibility to our grandchildren and our great grandchildren. When they are looking back in 150 years from now, what will they say when our stories are read? A life that will inspire future generations is our responsibility.

NOTE: A number of rumors have circulated about the ages of the young men from Salt Lake who carried the people across the Sweetwater, and that they died very soon afterward. The following information is as accurate as can be found to date: (Also note that there were 4, not 3.)

David P. Kimball Age 17 Died age 44

George W. Grant Age 18 Died age 49

Stephen W. Taylor Age 22 Died age 86

Clark Allen Huntington Age 25 Died age 65

They did, however, suffer from rheumatism and other infirmities in later years, probably as a result of that experience.