The image of the pioneer wagon rolling across the Prairie — Victorian bonnets amid Big Sky and bison — is an enduring slice of Americana. And yet, as Americans commemorate the anniversary of a famous pioneer disaster this year, history reveals that for one group of migrants, the journey began not at the Mississippi but in rural England.
The pioneers who rode their wagons to the American West chased many dreams. Some sought land in Oregon, or gold in California, or, in the case of the Mormons, religious freedom. It is the Mormons who seem the strangest in this already alien picture, with their odd ways and many wives. After their prophet was murdered in Illinois, the Mormons left the United States altogether, eventually settling around the Great Salt Lake. In 1896 Utah returned to the fold of the United States. The Mormons dropped polygamy and began their assimilation into American life.
As mirrored in the polished windows of Salt Lake City’s skyscrapers today, modern Mormonism — the occasional break-away Big Love-style polygamists aside — is more American than it has ever been: conservative, clean-cut, prosperous. One of their number, Massachusetts’ governor Mitt Romney, has a decent chance of taking “Mormon values” all the way to the White House in 2008. Jewish literary critic and religious exegete Harold Bloom has called Mormonism “the best expression of American religion.” But, unbeknownst to some, Mormonism’s roots extend beyond America.
This year Mormons are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Mormon “handcart” companies. Poorer emigrants who could not afford covered wagons loaded up their supplies into small carts at the Mississippi and literally pulled them to Utah, 1000 miles away across Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming. All over America, Mormons are re-enacting their ancestors’ trek, pulling replica handcarts and making a sacrament of their pioneer heritage. As one Mormon youth put it as she sweltered in the summer Dakotan sun, “you begin to realize the strength and commitment the pioneers made for the growth of the church and for the freedom of our beliefs.”
1856 is indelibly etched into Mormon memory as a year of disaster. Late in the summer of 1856, a group of around 500 Mormons left Iowa bound for Utah. By October they had reached central Wyoming, too late to avoid the onset of the harsh Wyoming winter. With heavy snow making it impossible to continue on to Salt Lake City, the company sought refuge in a bleak cove. One of this unfortunate band recorded her experience:
We found a small ravine since named Martin’s Ravine. Here we made our camp in a clump of willows that grew close together. We settled down as we could not go on farther. We must wait for help or death must come to us. Few of us cared which. In the morning to add to our suffering a heavy snow had fallen upon us. We had camped in a circle so we did not know which way to go or from which we had come. Here we were lost, starving, and buried in two feet of snow. Three days we lived through this–In the morning there were thirteen dead and two more died during the day. While we were preparing to go on, the dead were gathered and placed in one large grave.
These pioneers were largely emigrants from Britain. The woman who wrote this terrible account was from Manchester. To the east of the cove, another pioneer group (the “Willie company”) also faced disaster. One of their number, James Kirkwood, was from Glasgow. He carried his crippled brother to the camp. When the two finally arrived, James collapsed and died from exposure and over-exertion.
The story of the Oakey family — other members of the Willie handcart company — began in Worcestershire. Thomas Oakey was born in 1813, in Eldersfield, Worcestershire. He married Ann Collett in August 1832 and they both became active members in the church of the United Brethren, a breakaway Methodist group. In the early 1840’s, American Mormon missionaries proselytized earnestly in Worcestershire and Herefordshire. They converted many, including almost the entire United Brethren congregation (centered at Gadfield Elm). The Oakey’s joined the Mormons, and on 1 May, 1856 they set sail with their family on the steamship Thornton on the first leg of their journey to Salt Lake City.
The family was assigned, like the unfortunate James Kirkwood, to the Willie handcart company. In the deadly Wyoming snows, Ann, who was a nurse, did what she could to help those who were sick. The youngest Oakey daughter, Sarah Ann, later remembered their suffering:
There were many people in camp who died but we fared fairly well until we reached the deep snow in Wyoming. Our father froze his feet and hands and his toenails came off. Though the family suffered many hardships we always held our family prayer.
Another daughter, Rhoda, aged 10, became ill and died the night before the family eventually reached the Salt Lake valley. Thomas was so sick that Ann had to leave him with Rhoda’s body and take the rest of the family on to the city. When Ann had settled in Salt Lake City, she went back to get the rest of her family.
What, beyond the cruel Plains’ winter, caused this disaster? Historians note that these British Mormons left Liverpool (and consequently Iowa) too late to avoid the onset of winter and should have waited until the following spring. But the Mormons impatiently desired a sanctuary to practice their beliefs. In Missouri, the governor ordered the Mormons to leave or face “extermination”; in Illinois, their prophet was gunned-down, their promised land shattered.
And so the Mormons, many of them originally from Britain, fled the United States, risking the Plains’ crossing to find refuge in the Rocky Mountains (in territory that was then outside of the US). The depth of Mormon feeling about the handcart pioneers is expressed by Paul Willie, great-great grandson of the leader of the Willie company: “This incredible migration is being remembered 150 years later…It hasn’t been forgotten and the drama of crossing the plains is still a little part of our blood.”
In the story of such an American religion, the role of British Mormons is surprising to some. In mid 19th century Utah, about half of the population were from Britain, replacing many of the American Mormons whose faith in the Mormon Zion had wavered. As Gordon Hinckley, president of the Church and himself a descendant of pioneers, said, the British Mormons “paid a terrible price moving from this land of lush greenery to a dusty land, but the emigrants saved the Church in America.”
The newly restored Gadfield Elm Chapel, centre of the Mormon migration from Worcestershire, is open to visitors. For those intending to visit, please telephone (001 44) 1452 840576.
September 24, 2006 at 9:28 am
Last Sunday our sacrament meeting speaker, a member of our stake presidency, gave a very nice talk about the handcart companies. He’s a convert and has no ancestors among them, but it is part of our shared heritage and he claims it for himself now. In the same spirit, I claim the English origins of so many of these people as a part of my shared religious heritage (and indeed, most of my ancestors were from England, although none that I know of in the handcart companies).
Did anyone attend Will Bagley’s revisionist take at Sunstone on the Willie and Martin disaster, pinning the blame squarely on one the chest of one Brigham Young? I’m curious what you thought of it (I missed that sessin).
September 24, 2006 at 9:37 am
Kev,
I think the Church has made a real effort that we all assimilate this heritage. My ancestors were (obviously) English but not Mormon. For all I know they threw stones at Wilford. Still, I claim the Oakey’s as my own, mostly as they’re from my neck of the woods. I cannot imagine what they thought of the frozen Plains. The iconoclast in me wants to find the story of some English Mormons who made the Trek but then thought, “screw this, this sucks,” and went home.
September 24, 2006 at 10:14 am
Ronan, how are your folks enjoying their new gig as missionaries at the chapel?
September 24, 2006 at 10:32 am
Rule Britannia! Good post, Ronan. Tell me, what do you think are the modern implications of your post here — for example, do you think we need to begin taking more seriously the heritage offered by the now-majority of international Saints?
September 24, 2006 at 11:34 am
The heritage offered by the now-majority of international Saints?
You cannot beat The Trek for its epic nature. I usually roll my eyes a little when we’re told “we’re all Pioneers.” Well, yeah, but it doesn’t compare.
I always think that in the Church the English Saints are quite lucky because we also have a claim on the Pioneers. That gets us off the hook.
Kev, they’re loving it.
September 24, 2006 at 2:09 pm
Nicely written, Ronan. Thanks for sharing it.
September 24, 2006 at 2:49 pm
From Princeton Wordnet 2.0:
Isn’t it apparent how those definitions apply to virtually any member of the Church today, and converts and internationals more than most?
September 24, 2006 at 2:50 pm
Ronan,
There are such stories. I will see if I can dig some up for you.
September 24, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Costanza,
Please do.
September 24, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Ronan,
There are other vitally British elements in Mormon heritage. I spent the summer in research seminar on 19th century Mormon intellectual history. It’s pretty clear to me that after the martrydom and for roughly the next decade or so, the intellectual center of the church shifted to England. It was there, in the 40s and 50s that the major early church tracts were published (Orson Pratt’s The Seer and Series of Pamphlets, John Jaques’ Catechism for Children, Orson Spencer’s Letters, etc)–works that would slowly make their way back to Utah and exert a major influence on subsequent Mormon thought. The reasons, primarily, were that there was a severe paper shortage in Utah and much of what was written was designed to aid missionary efforts, often responses to anti Mormon tracts that were circulating around England. Ironically, most of the pamphlets published were resoundingly unsuccessful in terms of their effect on proselytizing or cost-effectiveness; but most eventually found their way to the bookshelves of the Saints out West. My sense is that Mormon historians are only beginning to scratch the surface of just how profound Britain’s influence on the 19th century Church was.
Cheers.
September 24, 2006 at 5:45 pm
Polly Aird should have an entire volume on her Scottish ancestor who came and then left during the reformation out fairly soon.
Ronan, this was an excellent piece. Well written and important. I’ve heard that the Tab (“Americas Choir”) once sang in welch, because that is the language they all spoke…I’m away from my resources for a couple of days, yet, so i can’t confirm it.
They did save the Church, and thank God for that.
September 24, 2006 at 7:01 pm
I live in Iowa, and I have enjoyed all the local fuss over the handcart sesquicentennial.
I just returned Thomas Alexander’s bio of Wilford Woodruff, so I can’t look this up. There was a footnote in the section about Wilford’s time in England–something about a demographic study by Dean May tracing how many of the early Utah settlers were European immigrants, probably trying to connect Wilford’s missionary success to actual numbers of Mormons in Utah. Ronan mentioned “about half” the Mormons were from Britain in the mid 19th century. Do you have any source on that? It’s fascinating. I’m also interested in Scandanavian converts, though I don’t have any Mormon heritage. My father was born and raised in Denmark but converted in Canada. We went back to visit Denmark 5 years ago and observed the church there. It was small but strong. It made me wonder what would have happened–both in the U.S. and in Denmark–if the Saints had not been asked to come to Utah. Does President Hinckley’s comment imply that the church would have collapsed in the U.S. and Europe without the immigration? I agree that physical unity was pretty important. Nowadays with members being “gathered” to “Zion” in stakes across the world, many can travel and communicate more easily and quickly with each other and church headquarters. So (for another post, perhaps) was this dispensation saved by gathering, and then later by technology that allowed us all to keep in touch? Sounds too much like a “technimony,” but I can’t help wondering…
September 24, 2006 at 7:04 pm
Ronan, Unfortunately I don’t have any stories in my husband’s great grandfather’s own words, but the story in the family was that he was horrified when he got to Utah and spent the rest of his days telling everyone how beautiful and green England was. He wanted to go back, but never scraped up the money. (He was from near Birmingham. I think his village is under the airport now.) Have you seen A Good Time Coming: Mormon Letters to Scotland, (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988), Frederick S. Buchanan, ed. ? It’s about several Scottish converts who made it out to Utah, but were not very happy or successful. The book is mostly their letters to the folks back home in Scotland, from Utah. One part that was particularly memorable to me was the description of the folks in Smithfield, Utah, since my own family was from there. My own ancestors are not mentioned by name, but the author of the letters doesn’t paint a flattering portrait of many of the folks there.
September 24, 2006 at 7:08 pm
As the great-grandson of a Hertfordshire lad that made the trek in 1853 (Liverpool to New Orleans, then Keokuk, Iowa, and west), I join in praise of a people who gave up their beautiful land for what must have seemed a desolate wilderness. “This is the place?” they must have wondered.
I can see my great-great-grandfather, a cobbler by trade, in this statement by Hannah Cornaby: “The oxen were wild, and getting them yoked was the most laughable sight I had ever witnessed; everybody giving orders and nobody knowing how to carry them out.”
Nothing about their life in England would have prepared them for life on the trail, or in the West. That they persevered is testimony to their faith–but also, perhaps, to their having few alternatives. You’ve just spent all you had (and gone into debt to the PEF) to transport the household to Utah. Time for some of that British stiff upper lip–get to work and make the best of things.
September 25, 2006 at 8:11 am
Ronan, well done.
Mark B., I think the next line or so of sister Cornaby’s narrative includes the part where “the brethren had to be admonished for their language.”
September 25, 2006 at 8:31 am
Mark IV:
The lines I quoted were from her Autobiography and Poems, which Fred Woods and Douglas Atterberg quoted in their “The 1853 Mormon Migration through Keokuk” in Annals of Iowa, vol 61, no. 1, 1-23. (Sorry about the long dull citation, but if there be errors, let them bear the blame!)
Anyway, the next lines they quoted were:
“If the men had not been saints, there would doubtless have been much profane language used; but the oxen, not understanding ‘English,’ did just as well without it.”
Hard to imagine, eh?
September 25, 2006 at 8:48 am
Thanks for the exact citation, Mark. It’s funny what we think we remember.
I also appreciate how you brought out the fact that these people were refugees from the industrial revolution in Britain, city dwellers who were unprepared for the American frontier. It must have been very difficult for them.
September 25, 2006 at 11:18 am
I grew up in northern Utah, and three of my four grandparents were grandchildren, or children, of English immigrants. (The other one was Danish, with Danish pioneer grandparents.) While I was growing up, I don’t think I realized what a change this must have been for European immigrants. Utah seemed a lush fertile place to me, compared with Wyoming, and everyone I knew had at least some experience with livestock, and farming. It didn’t occur to me until much later, when I had moved away, how utterly horrible Wyoming must have seemed to my English ancestors. One of them died from bad water out along the Sweetwater– a place that must have been unimaginable to her a few months earlier. A ggg grandfather of mine kept a diary and also wrote a life history which have been edited into a very good book, along with his letters. It’s called “William F. Rigby, The True Aim of a Noble Man”. He was born to an unwed mother, in Stockport, near Manchester, in 1833. He went to work in the silk mills when he was 8. He joined the church later, and came across the plains at the age of twenty, with his wife, who had also been in the mills. This part of his life sketch is a good example here, “And I was selected to drive a team connsisting of 2 yoke of oxen and a yoke of cows which was quite a task for me as I did not know how to select my team from the herd nor what to say either to start or stop the. But we had as good a man for our captain, I think , as ever crossed the plains of the name of Major John Brown, who has been at this date of writeing, 1884, bishop of Pleasant Grove in Utah County for many years and has still proved to be a good, kind bishop as he was a good kind captain to us…….(skipping over some of the text)… When we started out from camp the first day I had an incident occured which seemed to learn me at least to be very careful as we drove on a turnpike road planked with 2 inch lumber some fives miles & a ditch on each side. My team got thirsty and Brother James Newton of Manchester and Lees of Stockport should have been on the off side watching the team till I got used to driveing, but [they] left, & the team run off the road into the ditch & upset the wagon, & my wife Mary &Sister Newton & some of her children being in the wagon screeamed terribly, & it allmost paralized me. Then Captain Isaac C. Haight who had charge of the whole of that season’s emigrations being a short distance ahead rode back & seeing me standing there all most scared out my wits said to me, ‘You damed green Englishman, cotton spinner, weaver or whatever you are, come help these folks out of this wagon.’ Well, I had never before heard a Mormon leder use such language before, & it just parilized me to the spot. After repeated over with more vemimence still & moved off, but still there I stood till Captain John Brown came, & he spoke so kind to me that it aroused me from my stupor at once. &I assisted to unload the wagon & as luck would have it, no one was hurt & only the front standard broke, so we were soon on our way again.” (Spelling and wording as in the original)
September 25, 2006 at 12:03 pm
Paula, great anecdote. “Damed green Englishman.” Love it.
September 25, 2006 at 1:30 pm
Another tidbit: if you’re ever in Salt Lake and have an hour to waste, go take a look at the cemetary at Fort Douglas by the University of Utah campus. The Fort, named (not coincidentally) for the then famously anti Mormon Illinois politician Stephen Douglas, housed a division of the US military that was stationed there essentially to keep the Mormons in line. If you look at the headstones at the Fort’s cemetery for the territorial period, you’ll see an unusually high percentage of Irish names. This might be incidental, but I’m reminded of a colorful character from the film Braveheart, an Irishman who gleefully joins the cause of William the Wallace because he will “get to kill English.”
September 25, 2006 at 1:37 pm
Brad,
I may have to edit your comment. Br*veh@*rtt is not to be mentioned in my company.
September 25, 2006 at 4:20 pm
Ronan,
Edit away. I mentioned it because it was the only stock English-hating Irishman I could conjure up off the top of my head. Truthfully (as I mentioned in the Bush-is-not-the-prophet thread), I abhor the film and am ashamed to have enjoyed it as a teenager.
Such, perhaps, is the wistful, lustful, testosterone-induced folly of male American youth.
September 28, 2006 at 9:01 am
In the most recent issue of BYU Studies, there’s an article about Francis Webster, the older man who is famous for stopping a Sunday School discussion in 1904 criticizing church leaders for letting Martin handcart company leave so late. (“We became acquainted with [God] in our extremities.”) I love that story, but I’m also happy to have someone investigate the claims and context. The author talks about Webster’s claim that none in the company uttered a word of criticism, and “not one of that company ever apostatized or left the church.” Some did. For example, Henry Augustus Squires and some of his family returned to England in 1867 where Henry again became a Baptist minister until his death in 1914. Henry Kemp and Deborah Jane Chapman joined RLDS. As usual, the same experience can produce different outcomes based on what people bring TO the experience.
October 1, 2006 at 12:59 pm
[...] 150th anniversary of Wille handcart companies. They began this travel in faith. They had little or no knowledge of what they were getting into. They ran into very harsh obstacles and death. Scores died and were buried in the frozen ground. When Brigham Young received their distress note in conference he took immediate action and instructed the saints to go and rescue their brethren out on the plains with food and supplies. This took place immediately. While some 200 died, 1000’s were saved. Pres. Hinckley’s wife’s great grandmother was one of those. [...]
January 23, 2007 at 1:15 pm
A correction to your sad story: James Kirkwood (age 11) carried his younger brother, Joseph Campbell Kirkwood (age 4), not his crippled older brother Thomas (age 19), who rode on the handcart pushed by their oldest brother Robert (my great-great-grandfather) and their mother.
January 23, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Kay,
Thanks for that. I would love to see any journals you might have. ronan at jhu dot edu