Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Doctrine and Covenants 136, part 3: The Miraculous Story of Latter-day Saint Migration West

There are dozens of stories of miracles that occurred in the lives of individual Mormon pioneers. These build our faith, and encourage us to know that God is there for us in our personal challenges. But when my brother laid out, in a sacrament meeting talk, the overall picture of the Latter-day Saint Migration--how Heavenly Father arranged for different groups involved in different journeys from different places to work together in an intricate and complicated fashion to accomplish the establishment of Zion in the Great Basin--my faith was strengthened exponentially! Each of these groups--the overland pioneers, the ocean pioneers, the southern pioneers, and the Mormon Battalion--went through their own excruciating trials and terrors, and yet the Lord was working through them all to create a giant miracle.

I wanted to see this miracle visually, and I wanted to be able to comprehend and remember it, to be able to tell it from memory, so I laid it out in a timeline with maps. I color-coded the groups on the map and in the text (blue for the seafaring saints, red for the main body of overland pioneers, gold for the Mississippi saints, and green for the military group). I filled in more details as I discovered them, and each time, my faith was strengthened. Once I saw the timeline of the Latter-day Saint Migration, it became very difficult to believe that it could have been accomplished without Divine planning.  I recalled times in my own life where I was stuck crossing a trackless prairie of problems, entirely unaware of the benevolent machinations of my Heavenly Father in other places and in other people's lives that would all come together to create a miracle that I would later see and comprehend.

My trust and faith in my Heavenly Father has been strengthened through this study, and I hope yours will be as well.

This blog post is available in PowerPoint form. E-mail me if you want a copy; I'd love for you to share it with your ward or branch!   
thepianoisgrand@gmail.com


A Table in the Wilderness
A Timeline of the Miraculous Latter-day Saint Migration West


Shortly after the evacuation of Nauvoo, in a pioneer camp on the west of the Mississippi River, a destitute Mormon mother, Sarah Leavitt, was confronted by an antagonistic government officer.

"Why, madam," he said, "I see nothing before you but
inevitable destruction in going off into the wilderness among savages, far from civilization, with nothing
but what you can carry in your wagon…I see nothing before you but starvation.”

Quoting Psalm 78:19, Sarah told him, “The Lord [will] spread a table for us in the wilderness…”

The officer was right: there was no chance of success.
And yet the Mormons triumphed.
Here is the timeline of their story.


A statue honoring Sarah Sturtevant Leavitt is located in Santa Clara, Utah


On the base of her statue, excerpts of her testimony are inscribed.


--1841--
 

The first American overland pioneers leave Missouri for the Oregon territory. They follow existing trails to Fort Hall in Eastern Idaho, abandon their wagons when the trail ends but safely reach Oregon.





--1842--

Congress sends Army Captain John C. Fremont on a series of exploratory expeditions to the western territories. Copies of his maps are given to Mormon Church leaders by an Illinois senator. 


--1843--

 Large numbers of American pioneers are migrating westward to California and Oregon on the Oregon Trail.


--June 27, 1844--

Joseph Smith is murdered at Carthage Jail. 
Persecutions increase for the Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo.

--October 1845--

The Quincy Convention calls for all Mormons to leave Nauvoo by May of 1846.

A few days later, the Carthage Convention calls for their forced removal by militia, should they fail to meet the deadline.

12,000 saints in Nauvoo and another 2,000-3,000 in the surrounding states will soon be homeless.

--October 11, 1845-- 

President Brigham Young calls team captains
for the move west and Nauvoo saints begin gathering supplies and making wagons. Saints in other areas are called to gather with them and go west. The plan is that they will all go together in one gigantic 2,500-wagon train in an organized fashion.

--January 1846-- 
  
John Brown is sent from Nauvoo to collect the families he baptized on his mission three years earlier in Monroe County, Mississippi to join the expedition west. The congregation of saints there includes whites and blacks. Most of the black saints are slaves.

(I'm sorry I put the blue star on Boston instead of New York--
by I'm not sorry enough to fix it!)

Meanwhile, a community of converts on the east coast, too poor to make the overland trek, pools its money to charter the Ship Brooklyn. They will take a dangerous voyage around Cape Horn to the west coast, stopping off in Chile and Hawaii on the way. From there, they will travel to meet the saints at their final destination. Sam Brannan is called to lead the group.


--February 4, 1846--

Because of violence and threats, the first saints leave Nauvoo. The organized plan is abandoned, and there are eventually three exoduses over the following 9 months or so.

--also February 4, 1846--

The very same day, the Ship Brooklyn leaves New York City with 238 saints living between-decks in 2,500 feet of space. The lower hold is full of cows, pigs, chickens, sawmills, a gristmill, seeds, tools, a printing press and everything they need to set up a civilization from scratch.



--The Nauvoo Covenant--

Time has not been adequate to prepare wagons and supplies for all the saints in Nauvoo. Many do not have the means, having been unable to sell their homes at fair prices. A covenant is made that those who leave first will stop at a safe spot along the trail and send wagons and teamsters back and forth for all those who wish to come. 


By spring, there are over 10,000 saints scattered across Iowa, obtaining jobs to earn money along the way. The Nauvoo Brass Band plays concerts for pay as they travel. Pioneers build temporary settlements with crops planted for those who follow.


Pres. Young calls Jesse Little to go to Washington, D.C. to petition the government for a contract to build roads and forts on their way west in order to finance the trek.

--Early Spring 1846--

The Ship Brooklyn has blown nearly to Africa before finding trade winds to blow her back to the Cape. She's made it safely around Cape Horn, chipping ice ahead of her in the water, and she's survived the oppressive heat of the tropical doldrums. Now a huge storm blows her away from Chile, where the passengers had planned to resupply. So instead, the captain steers them to the Juan Fernandez Islands. 

There they are able to obtain fresh water, fish, fruit, potatoes and firewood at a cost hundreds of dollars less than Chilean prices. It is another “table in the wilderness.”


--April 8, 1846--

The first group of Mississippi saints leaves to join the Nauvoo saints and travel to the west. There are 43 in the company.


--May 1, 1846--

The Nauvoo Temple is finally dedicated, although temple work had ceased in February. Over
the winter, 6,000 saints had received their endowments in the completed portions of the Nauvoo Temple. The temple is immediately put up for sale, but no reasonable offer is made. They ask $200,000 and years later finally receive $5,000.

Even while in this distress, a few men are called on missions to Europe straight from the refugee camps.



--May 13, 1846--

The U.S. declares war on Mexico

--May 21, 1846--
  
Jesse Little arrives in Washington, realizes the government’s focus is now the war, and petitions U.S. President James Polk to contract a battalion of Mormon men to fight in the war. It is a very bold move, considering the government had just forced the Mormons to surrender all their weapons the year before because of the conflict in Missouri. Polk is highly dubious, but amazingly, Little convinces him and wins the contract.

The formation of the Mormon Battalion puts Brigham Young and the Mormons on the same team as the U.S. government at last, and ends the very real threat of governmental interference on the trek west.

--May 26, 1846--

John Brown and the Mississippi saints arrive in Independence, Missouri, the jumping-off point for all travel to the west, hear wild stories about Mormons killing people in the west, and assume that Brigham Young has gone on ahead of them. They decide to head west to catch up, rather than go north to Nauvoo.



--June 20, 1846--


The Ship Brooklyn stops in Hawaii to deliver a load of cargo. 

12 people have died on the voyage. The U.S. Navy is stationed at Pearl Harbor, preparing for war with Mexico.


--June 29, 1846--


The Nauvoo refugees arrive at the Missouri River.

U.S. Army Captain James Allen meets them & musters 540 men for the Mormon Battalion.

Pres. Young delays the journey west for a year to allow time for the Battalion to earn money. He establishes Winter Quarters in Nebraska.



--July 10, 1846--

Meanwhile, the Mississippi wagon train has hurried all the way to Laramie, Wyoming before a passing traveler (it's a busy road these days) tells them that no Mormons are ahead of them on the trail. At the invitation of a trapper, they leave the trail to wait out the winter at Pueblo, Colorado with the group of trappers and their Spanish and Indian wives. 



--July 21, 1846--
The Mormon Battalion leaves Winter Quarters, the only religiously-based military unit in the history of the United States. 

Brigham Young promises them that none will die in battle. 

They head south to be outfitted at Fort Leavenworth.

(There's an itty-bitty green line down from Winter Quarters.)

--July 31, 1846--

After a 24,000-mile voyage, the Ship Brooklyn saints arrive at present-day San Francisco, then just a small town, and find out that an American warship had sailed into the harbor just 3 weeks earlier, and planted a flag. They are back in the United States! 


One passenger later writes, “Of all the memories of my life, not one is so bitter as that dreary six months’ voyage, in an emigrant ship, round the Horn.” 

San Francisco immediately becomes an overwhelmingly Mormon community. They start farming while they await instruction from Brigham Young.



--August 7, 1846--  


The Mississippi saints arrive at Pueblo with plenty of summer left to build homes and a log church, earning food by working for the trappers.

John Brown returns east to meet with Pres. Young and then bring more saints from Mississippi. 



--August 1846--

The Mormon Battalion leaves Fort Leavenworth, marching southwest to fight Mexico. They are given a clothing allowance of $42 each ($21,000 total), which they immediately turn over to the Church, opting to wear their old clothes. Through their term of service, they earn $50,000, an enormous sum of money, which finances the pioneer emigration west.



 --September 13, 1846--
The Battle of Nauvoo

Less than 1,000 of the most destitute Mormons remain in Nauvoo, including Hyrum Smith’s widow, Mary Fielding Smith, with her children, as well as Truman O. Angell, the future architect of the Salt Lake, St. George and Logan Temples. These stragglers are attacked by anti-Mormons, and forced to sign the surrender of the city three days later, whereupon they are driven out at gunpoint.


--September 14, 1846--

At Winter Quarters, an 11-man rescue party leaves to bring the last saints out of Nauvoo, knowing nothing about the attack.


--September 25, 1846--

Reports of the Battle of Nauvoo reach Winter Quarters, and another rescue party is sent with 20 wagons.


--October 6, 1846

The rescue party arrives at the "poor camps" outside Nauvoo to find the situation much more desperate than they are prepared to meet. The rescue captain, Orville Allen, sends some of his men into the surrounding area to purchase more supplies. Meanwhile the people are starving.

--October 9, 1846--

Thousands of exhausted quail suddenly fly into the refugee camp, flopping onto the ground all around the wagons and tents, and even onto the arms and the heads of the pioneers. 
Even the sick can easily pick up a bird with no resistance at all. The suffering saints eat well that day at a “table in the wilderness.” The quail stop coming at 3:00 p.m. The men arrive back with the supplies and the rescue team heads back with the first group at 4:30.

--October 1846--

The Mormon Battalion arrives at Santa Fe. Many members have fallen ill along the way. The sick
Battalion members are sent to Pueblo, Colorado.


--October 1846--

John Brown arrives back at Winter Quarters. Pres. Young requests that he enlist several strong Mississippi men to join his advance team and wait to emigrate the rest of the Mississippi saints the next year.

The sick Battalion members arrive at Pueblo to find the Mississippi saints waiting there--surprise! To add to the reunion, the leader of the sick contingent is James Brown, another missionary who served in Monroe, Mississippi. 


--October 24, 1846--

Sam Brannan
publishes an early edition of The California Star newspaper, printed on the Mormon press.

--January 9, 1847

The first subscriptions are delivered by hand, or hawked on street corners in San Francisco, and
are sent east and to Great Britain on ships.


--January 1847--

John Brown arrives back in Mississippi. He selects four white men with four black slaves for the journey. Two of the slaves die before reaching Winter Quarters. The other two are brothers, Oscar Crosby and Hark Lay, who are owned by different masters.


--January 22, 1847--

The Mormon Battalion arrives at San Diego, having walked 2,000 miles, the longest military march in history.  It has been an almost unimaginably difficult journey. The war is over, so they are assigned to garrison duty and civic improvement. 20 men have died on the journey due to sickness or injury, and all the men are nearly starved to death, but they have seen no armed conflict.


--April 5, 1847--

The advance pioneer party leaves Winter Quarters, led by Pres. Young. There are 148 in the party, including the four men from Mississippi and an additional black Mormon slave from the south already there (a friend of the other two) named Green Flake. Green remains faithful all his life, and later works as a servant in the home of Brigham Young.


(Green Flake)

--May 1847--

Seventeen saints from the group waiting at Pueblo watch two weeks for Brigham Young’s arrival on the trail at Fort Laramie.

--June 3, 1847--

Pres
. Young’s advance team arrives at Fort Laramie. Those waiting from Pueblo join the group, and one of the apostles in the team, Amasa Lyman, goes to Pueblo to bring the rest to the Great Basin.


--June 30, 1847--

Sam Brannan, having made his way back from California, reports to Pres. Young at his camp along the trail. 



--July 16, 1847--

The Mormon Battalion
is mustered out of service at Los Angeles and the men begin to make their way north.
Some head straight to the Salt Lake Valley to get on the trail back to Winter Quarters to get family.
Others go north to San Francisco to join with the Brooklyn saints in the biggest Mormon community in the west, and earn money to take back to Salt Lake. 



--July 22, 1847--

Happily surprised to find the cut-off from the Oregon Trail down to the Great Basin has already been blazed (by the Donner party, who were following bad advice about it being a great shortcut to California), the first advance party (including the three black slaves) arrives in Salt Lake Valley far ahead of schedule and immediately plants crops.
Two days later, on what is now celebrated as Pioneer Day in Utah, Pres
. Young’s party arrives in Salt Lake Valley. Sam Brannan teaches the Saints to make adobe bricks for houses, a skill he learned in California.


--September 8-11, 1847--

About 100
Battalion members find work building a saw mill for John Sutter on the American River near San Francisco.

--Autumn 1847--

The first Battalion
members arrive in the Salt Lake Valley from
Los Angeles. They are able to teach the saints invaluable skills for desert farming and irrigation which they learned from the Pueblo Indians and the Mexicans as they toiled through the southwest.



--January 24, 1848--

Gold is discovered at Sutter's Mill. The location of the biggest find is dubbed “Mormon Island” because of the Mormons who worked there. Word travels quickly by mouth and ship first to Oregon, Hawaii and Latin America. 

--March 15, 1848--


 The Californian newspaper publishes the first article proclaiming the discovery of gold. 

--June 10, 1848--

Sam Brannan's California Star publishes the cautiously optimistic opinion that there is room for another 50,000 prospectors without ruining the area. This news is dispatched back east by Mormon Battalion express riders. Four days later, they suspend publication so that the staff can rush to the gold fields themselves. Eventually tens of thousands around the world rush to California to get rich.

--Summer 1848--

Many more Mormon families emigrate. To avoid harassment from anti-Mormon pioneers, they travel on the north of the Platte River, rather than on the Oregon Trail to the south. This separation contributes to a better survival rate for the Mormons, thanks to the organization and cleanliness of their camps, and the avoidance of cholera contamination left behind
by Oregon Trail travelers.


--Summer 1848--

Insects, frost and drought destroy much of the crop in the Great Basin. The saints nearly starve through the
winter. In the midst of this crisis, Heber C. Kimball, a counselor in the First Presidency, prophesies that “States’ goods would be sold in the streets of Salt Lake City cheaper than in New York, and that the people would be abundantly supplied with food and clothing.”

--1849--

The tools of the settlers in Salt Lake City are wearing out with no chance of replacement. The California Gold Rush brings many fortune-seekers out west. Merchants race from the east to make a profit off the prospectors; hearing that merchant ships have beat them to San Francisco, some overlanders change their minds, head down to Salt Lake City, and sell their wares at extremely low prices in order to lighten their loads and rush ahead to prospect for themselves. The prices are lower than in New York City by half. The presence of the prospectors also greatly inflates the prices the Mormon retailers and tradesmen can charge. In addition, prospectors drop tools and supplies all along the trail near Utah in order to lighten their loads and speed their journey, knowing they can buy more in California. Mormon men go along the trail and pick up amazing amounts of tools, wagons, stoves, even food like beans and bacon. It’s another “table in the wilderness.”

--May 25, 1849--

Apostle
Amasa Lyman arrives in San Francisco and encourages the Brooklyn saints to come to the Salt Lake Valley. Increasing lawlessness in California provides additional incentive. Besides gold-prospecting, Mormons have made money from the prospectors themselves. Alondus Buckland sells his Buckland House hotel, situated on a corner lot in downtown San Francisco, for an estimated $10,000, donating some to the Church and using some to emigrate his extended family and the rest of his hometown back east.

--July 14, 1849--

The wagon company, later known as “The Gold Train,” leaves for Utah, heavily loaded with gold. It is a dangerous journey, as the company dodges would-be thieves on the busy road.

A
bout 1/3 of the Brooklyn saints eventually leave California to resettle in Utah.


--September 28, 1849--

“The Gold Train” arrives in Salt Lake City, and nearly $15,000 is deposited in the Church’s bank account. With this money, Pres
. Young establishes the Perpetual Emigration Fund which funds the emigration of an additional 100,000 saints over the following years, mostly from Europe.
-----
60,000-70,000 Mormon pioneers eventually emigrate over land
until
1869 when the transcontinental railroad is completed. 

Most of them are converts from the European Mission.

The
death rate among the Mormon pioneers is unknown, but is estimated at less than 10% (including the Martin/Willie handcart disaster, and the deaths at Winter Quarters). This is about 5% lower than other pioneers, despite the fact that Mormon wagon trains consisted of many more inexperienced travelers; old, disabled or ill people; and families with young children.


Sarah Leavitt was right. The Lord did prepare a table in the wilderness.




Bibliography

Stewart R. Wyatt, Sacrament meeting talk, Boise, Idaho, 22 July 2012
Sarah Sturtevant Leavitt, personal history
William G. Hartley, “The Pioneer Trek: Nauvoo to Winter Quarters,” Ensign, June 1997
Joan S. Hamblin, “Voyage of the Brooklyn,” Ensign, July 1997
Leonard J. Arrington, “Mississippi Mormons,” Ensign, June 1977
Mormon Battalion Fact Sheet, MormonNewsroom.org
Susan Easton Black, “I Have a Question,” Ensign, July 1998
William G. Hartley, “On the Trail in September," Ensign, September 1997

•"The Excitement and Enthusiasm of Gold Washing Still Continues--Increases," California Star, accessed at  The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco
Clair L. Wyatt, The True Story of Nancy Laura Aldrich: Ship Brooklyn Pioneer, 2000

•Richard E. Bennett, We’ll Find the Place: The Mormon Exodus, 1846-1848, Deseret Book

•Margaret Blair Young and Darius Aidan Gray, One More River to Cross, Deseret Book

•Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, Deseret Book


-----

Doctrine and Covenants 136, part 2: Rescuing the Saints

Rescuing the Nauvoo Saints

We often hear of the rescue of the Martin and Willie Handcart Companies (in fact, that is the topic of next week's lesson) but seldom do we hear about the many other rescues among the pioneer companies both before and after that.

Long before the Saints left for the Great Basin, in the October 1839 conference, Brigham Young proposed to the saints that they promise to “stand by and assist each other to the utmost of our abilities in removing from [the state of Missouri], and that we will never desert the poor who are worthy…”  

This “Missouri Covenant” had been signed by 214 saints.  Now they made a similar covenant to help the Saints out of Jackson County, Missouri, which they kept.

In 1845, persecutions in Illinois became so great that President Young (president of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles) proposed a similar covenant, this one called "The Nauvoo Covenant," and it passed unanimously.  Their promise was to remove each other and all their brothers and sisters out of the reach of the exterminating order issued by Governor Boggs.  He then promised, “If you will be faithful to your covenant, I will now prophesy that the great God will shower down means upon this people, to accomplish it to the very letter.” 

Photo from Family Search

More than 11,000 members departed Nauvoo in small groups.  They crossed Iowa and camped along the Missouri River, over 300 miles from their former home.  Remaining in Nauvoo were hundreds who lacked the means to leave, either financially or physically.  Many were new arrivals who had expected Nauvoo to be the end of their journey.  Orville M. Allen was charged with heading up a rescue company to return to Nauvoo.   He took 20 wagons and a few men, collecting more provisions along the way as they could.

While Brother Allen was on his trek across Iowa, armed men entered Nauvoo and forced the remaining poor and sick men, women and children across the Mississippi River into the wilderness of Iowa.  Therefore when the rescue team arrived at these so-called “Poor Camps” (present-day Montrose) that October, they were astonished and overwhelmed by the need.  Poverty-stricken themselves, they found their brothers and sisters in dire circumstances.  How could they follow their commitment and rescue the 300 or more people they found, when they had used all they had to rescue so many others so recently?  They had done their best, and it was not nearly enough.  But the Lord honored these covenant-keeping men and, as Brigham Young had promised, He literally “showered down means to accomplish” the task.  Three days after the arrival of the rescue (the word after is key here—it was after they had kept their covenant, after they had done all they could) a miracle occurred.  All morning and into the afternoon, flocks of quail flew near the camps and simply flopped around on the ground.  They did not run or fly away, but just waited for the starving saints to pick them up in their hands.  Soon they had all the meat they could desire to eat. 

About 3:00 in the afternoon, the quail stopped coming.  Right then, Church trustees who had been working in Nauvoo to sell property arrived with shoes, clothing, molasses, salt pork, and salt as well as $100 they had received from non-Mormon citizens they had solicited up and down the Mississippi River. 

About 4:30, Captain Allen started the return trip, taking 157 people and 28 wagons.  (They used the wagons that had been in the Poor Camp as well as the ones he had brought.)  A second rescue team arrived at the end of October to bring the rest.  About 300 saints from the Poor Camps were rescued by their brothers.  (William G. Hartley, “How Shall I Gather?” Ensign, October 1997, p. 5-9)

The Rescue from Iowa

All of the saints had been rescued, but to what?  To the entirely inadequate camp they called Winter Quarters in Nebraska.  D&C 136 was received in the dead of winter with instructions on how to organize the trek.  The vanguard wagon trains headed for the Great Basin the following spring, but many, many saints were left behind, wondering how they would ever make the trip to Zion.

A committee was sent to Washington to seek government employment for financing the move to the west, headed by Jesse C. Little.  President James Polk finally agreed to enlist 500 Mormon men to march west and fight in the Mexican War.  They were to blaze trails along the way.  Each recruit would receive $42 for his uniform, which each of them immediately turned over to the church and marched in his own clothing.  Altogether, the Mormon Battalion brought over $50,000 to the church for their one-year enlistment; the equivalent in today’s U.S. dollars would be around $1.5 million.  (Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, p. 21)

Another miracle occurred.  Mormon Battalion members, having completed their enlistment, traveled north from San Diego to northern California where a group of L.D.S. members were now living and prospering. In fact, at the end of 1846, most of the white settlers in California were Mormon. How did they get west ahead of the rest of the saints?  Coincidentally on the very same day the Nauvoo saints had crossed the Missouri River, these impoverished saints had set sail from New York Harbor on the chartered Ship Brooklyn, sailed nearly to Africa before they found winds to carry them around Cape Horn, back up to Chile and nearly out to Hawaii, before finally blowing back to a northern California settlement.  It was an experiment in a cheaper way to get west than overland travel, but the trip was fearsome and treacherous and was not attempted again.  The town of Yerba Buena swelled to a small city with their arrival.  Today it is called San Francisco.  (Joan S. Hamblin, "Voyage of 'The Brooklyn'," Ensign, July 1997) 

About 80 members of the Mormon Battalion found work there while waiting for Brigham Young to come west.  Some worked at Sutter’s Mill.  The rest is history:  The California Gold Rush of 1949!  In fact, it was a Mormon, Sam Brannan, who published the news of the gold discovery to the rest of the U.S. in his newspaper, The California Star, as a 2-inch filler on an inside page.  Mormon Battalion members were hired as express riders to deliver the paper to the major cities back east, hoping to promote growth.  (Church video, "A Legacy More Precious Than Gold".)  The Mormons just wanted to get back to their families and were waiting for Brigham Young’s call, but in the meantime, they discovered the fabulous “Mormon Island,” the richest find of the gold rush.  (California Pioneer) 

The Salt Lake economy swelled as prospectors passed through, and the Brooklyn saints got rich in San Francisco, both from gold and from the booming economy.  Alondus D. Buckland built a hotel called “The Buckland House” on the corner of Kearny and Pacific in San Francisco.  When President Young called the Brooklyn Saints back to Salt Lake City, a corner lot was worth $10,000.  Alondus left California with Thomas Rhoads’ company, later nicknamed “The Gold Train,” bringing altogether $30,000-40,000 in gold with them.  (Okay, have to brag:  Alondus is my ancestor and I’m proud of him.)  Over $80,000 came into the church’s accounts between 1848 and 1851 from the California Saints.  (Stewart R Wyatt, “The Life and Times of Alondus de Lafayette Buckland, p. 24-29.  His source on the dollar amount is J. Kenneth Davies, Mormon Gold: The Story of California’s Mormon Argonauts, p. xv.) 

Another great miracle occurred.  The pioneers had now been in Salt Lake City a couple of years, were running out of supplies and their tools were wearing out.  Salt Lake City Fourth Ward Bishop Benjamin Brown published the story of this miracle:

“There we were, completely shut out from the world…the first shop was a thousand miles off…

“Information of the great discovery of gold in California had reached the States, and large companies were formed for the purpose of supplying the gold diggers with food and clothing and implements of every kind for digging, etc…In fact, these persons procured just the things they would have done, had they been forming companies purposely for relieving the Saints, and had they determined to do it as handsomely as unlimited wealth would allow.

“When these companies, after crossing the plains, arrived within a short distance of Salt Lake City, news reached them that ships had been dispatched from many parts of the world, fitted out with goods for California.  This threatened to flood the market.  The companies feared that the sale of their goods would not repay the expense of conveyance.  Here was a ‘fix’—the companies were too far from the States to take their goods back, and they would not pay to carry them through, and when to this was added the fact, that the companies were half crazy to leave trading, and turn gold diggers themselves, it will easily be seen how naturally the difficulty solved itself into the decision which they actually came to—‘Oh here are these Mormons, let us sell the goods to them.’  Accordingly they brought them into the Valley, and disposed of them…at least at half the price for which the goods could have been purchased in the states.”
  (Arrington, p. 67)

In addition, the trail from Fort Laramie, Wyoming to Salt Lake City was littered with abandoned items, which Mormon teams collected for nothing.  Howard Standsbury reported collecting:
  • 11 broken wagons
  • bar-iron and steel
  • large blacksmiths’ anvils and bellows
  • crowbars
  • drills
  • augers
  • gold-washers
  • chisels
  • axes
  • lead
  • trunks
  • spades
  • ploughs
  • large grindstones
  • baking-ovens
  • cooking-stoves “without number”
  • kegs
  • barrels
  • harness
  • clothing
  • bacon
  • beans
These, he said, “were found along the road in pretty much the order in which they have been here enumerated…In the course of this one day [July 27, 1849] the relics of 17 wagons and the carcasses of 27 dead oxen have been seen.”  (Arrington, p. 70)

The needs of the 49er’s traveling through Salt Lake greatly inflated the prices of goods the Mormons could offer them, as well.

The infusion of money to the church economy allowed the First Presidency to implement a wonderful new plan:  The Perpetual Emigration Fund.  Once again, it was October Conference 1849, when this new rescue plan was approved as the leaders asked, “Shall we fulfill the covenant, or shall we not?”  The announcement was issued by the First Presidency on October 12th, 1849:  “Ye poor and meek of the earth, lift up your heads and rejoice in the Holy One of Israel, for your redemption draweth nigh…but in your rejoicings be patient, for though your turn to emigrate may not be the first year, or even the second, it will come, and its tarrying will be short, if all the Saints who have, will be as liberal as those in the valley.”

The first PEF wagon train was organized in 1850.  The first year’s funds of $5,000 were taken to Iowa, and used to purchase livestock for the journey back to Salt Lake City.  The livestock was then sold, and that money was taken back to Iowa and the process repeated.  After just one year of operation, the PEF had nearly $20,000.

In 1852, 10,000 saints came to Utah from the Missouri River area, and “all the exiles from Nauvoo who wished to come had been removed to Zion,” and “the obligations of the Nauvoo pledge of 1846 had been faithfully discharged.”  (Hartley, p. 9-10)

Why so hard?

It was less than 20 years later that the transcontinental railroad was completed, making overland travel so much easier.  Why did the Lord not inspire and implement the faster and easier transportation of trains at the time of the Mormon Exodus, when it was so desperately needed?

The Lord was not simply interested in getting the pioneers out west.  He was interested in making saints of the pioneers.  The difficult process of gathering to Zion provided a refining process.  Not all made the cut:  Scattered along the Mormon Trail are not only the graves of those who died getting to the earthly Zion, but many casualties of spiritual infirmities.  Some saints gave up and stayed behind or turned back along the way.  Those who pushed through the challenges of conversion, persecution and migration could weather any storm.  Part of this refining process was brought about by the great effort required of the saints to rescue each other and bring all to Zion while in poverty themselves.

The Rescue Today

It is not enough for us today to be converted ourselves, or to reach financial prosperity ourselves.  After his terrible ordeal on the Brooklyn, his building role in San Francisco, his gathering with the saints in Salt Lake City, and his contributions to the Church funds, Alondus Buckland returned overland with a great deal of his money, fulfilled a mission in the east, and then returned as captain of a wagon train of 200 people, including his friends, converts and family members who had not been able to afford passage on the Brooklyn, financing much of their supplies himself.  On the return journey, he died of cholera and was wrapped in a sheet and buried in a trunk as a makeshift coffin.  He gave his all for the cause of Zion, leaving a great example for us.  (Wyatt, p. 34-37)
Alondus deLafayette Buckland

Even in our weaknesses, even in our poverty, we must turn around and rescue our brothers.  We cannot sit in our church and ignore the spiritually or physically needy.  We may not  know how their rescue will be accomplished, but if we heed the call and start along the trail, the Lord will “shower down blessings from heaven” and means will appear.  All we must do is our wholly inadequate best.

(At this point, you may be able to tell that I'm a little bit of a pioneer nerd...and I still have more to post...)