Elizabeth Whittear Sermon was one of hundreds of people who found themselves in a struggle for life in the fall of 1856 as they walked toward Utah as part of the Mormon handcart companies.
Many in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints used provisions of a program instituted in 1849 when the church allocated $5,000 to create the Perpetual Emigration Fund, or PEF.
The goal was to pay for the transportation costs for the converts to help them reach Utah.
Once there, they would repay what had been expended in their behalf, so the fund would continue into perpetuity.
The PEF stemmed from the “covenant” of 1846 when the Mormons abandoned Nauvoo, Illinois, and relocated to the west pledging to never desert “the poor who are worthy.”
In intervening years, the PEF helped Mormon converts travel by wagon train across the plains to Great Salt Lake City. The premise that the people taking advantage of the fund to travel would restore money to it was not sustained, as immigrant payments were unable to keep up with the demands on the fund.
With declining money and goods available for the PEF, in September 1855 LDS Church President Brigham Young fell back to an “old plan—to make hand-carts, and let the emigration foot it, and draw upon them [the handcarts] the necessary supplies, having a cow or two for every ten. They can come just as quick, if not quicker, and much cheaper—can start earlier and escape the prevailing sickness which annually lays so many of our brethren in the dust. A great majority of them walk now, even with the teams which are provided."
The travelers would push and pull the small two-wheeled carts holding their meager possessions – just 15 to 17 pounds of goods per person. Each cart was expected to be adequate for five people, and would be loaded with food, primarily flour plus a bit of salt and bacon.
The handcart treks began in the spring of 1856 when Edmund Ellsworth and 274 members of the First Company left England and crossed the Atlantic on the Enoch Train and Samuel Curling. Daniel D. McArthur's Second Company, which included 497 people, also was packed onto the Samuel Curling along with the 320 members of the Third Company, Welsh emigrants led by Edward Bunker
The ocean leg of the journey ended in Boston, New York, or Philadelphia. There the travelers boarded trains that brought them to the jumping off camps, mainly in Iowa, where they picked up their handcarts and began walking.
These Mormons now faced several weeks of grueling travel pushing and pulling what later Danish handcart captain John A. Ahmanson called “tohjulede Menneskepiner.”
This has been translated as “two-wheeled man-tormentors” by some, although historian Will Bagley said it “might be bettered rendered as ‘two-wheeled torture devices.’”
Even so, the first three handcart companies arrived in Salt Lake City by early fall in 1856. At the time Brigham Young might have believed the migration for the year was now concluded quite successfully. However, there were two additional groups of handcart pioneers still out on the trail.
James Grey Willie with more than 500 travelers in the Fourth Company left Iowa City in mid-July and departed from Winter Quarters in August. His company was followed by Edward Martin and the Fifth Company, who were accompanied by two Mormon wagon trains.
Setting Off Across the Plains
During that summer of 1856 Elizabeth and Joseph Sermon saw the early handcart companies and other traveling parties organize and depart from Florence. Joseph hesitated to take his family any deeper into the West, but finally Elizabeth persuaded him to move on.
They joined Martin’s handcart company of about 576 people when it pulled away from Cutler’s Park in Florence, Nebraska, on August 25, 1856, carrying provisions expected to last for sixty days.
Traveling near them were the wagon companies led by Benjamin Hodgetts and John A. Hunt.
Out on the plains, when it became necessary to haul more flour on the carts, the children had to walk. “The way was rough and the travel slow and hard,” Elizabeth Sermon would write. The traveling wore on Joseph Sermon whose health began to fail.
“I was beginning to think the handcart system was not very pleasant, and I felt it was the fault of the Captains,” Elizabeth Sermon said. “On some days we made good time—other days a cart or two would break down, a child would be missing,… Our food was giving out, our bodies growing weak. Cold weather chilled the body, the travel was slow and hard.”
Fellow traveler John Bond said, “The saints began to show weariness of the journey by the sunken eyes and emaciated forms from constant travel.” At times they did not reach camp until near midnight, pulling and tugging the carts, wearing shoes so worn out their toes protruded “in a bleeding condition.”
On October 8 Martin’s Company reached Fort Laramie, but unlike some westbound emigrant parties they did not lay over to rest, no doubt driven by the company leaders who must have known the weather could change at any time.
Heber McBride, a 13-year-old traveling with his family, had enjoyed the ocean crossing from England to America, but he did not like the overland journey with Martin’s handcart brigade. As food grew scarce and it started to get cold “the men began to give out teams gave out and so many [people] sick and dieing that they couldent all ride,” Heber recalled.
The boy’s mother was already ill and soon his father, Robert McBride, began struggling from the travel. Now more of the responsibility for the family fell to Heber and his 16-year-old sister Janetta.
“[S]ometimes we would find Mother laying by the side of the road … we would get her on the cart and haul her along till we would find Father lying as if he was dead then Mother would be rested a little and she would try and walk and Father would get on and ride and then we used to cry and feel so bad,” the son later wrote. Many days the McBride family did not reach camp until after dark.
The Hunt and Hodgetts wagon trains traveled near Martin’s Handcart Company, with Hodgetts out ahead of the handcarts and Hunt following behind. These weary travelers became alarmed at the sight of snow on Laramie Peak and the monotonous howling of wolves that began following the trains. “The snow cap[p]ed Peaks bring much alarm,” wrote Bond who was traveling with Hodgetts’ Company.
Wading Through an Icy River, Then Stranded by Snowstorms
At the final crossing of the North Platte River, near present Casper, many women tied up their skirts and waded through the icy water; men carried others across the river. Some handcart pioneers pleaded with Captain Martin to unload a wagon so they could ride across the stream. “The saints pleaded so earnestly,” Bond said, “We could hear their appeals on the opposite side of the river.”
They barely made it to the other side when the temperature plummeted and a piercing north wind drove snow, sleet, and hail against the people who camped soon after crossing the river. The following day, October 19, they struggled a few miles west to a new camp near Red Buttes, where the storm swirling around them forced another halt.
Heber McBride would later write, “The evening we crossed the Platte river for the last time[,] it was very cold and the next morning there was about 6 inches of snow on the ground and then what we had to suffer can never be told.”
After the river crossing, Robert McBride could no longer move, so Heber found a place for him to ride in one of the wagons. The children pulled the handcart carrying their mother to camp at Red Buttes and pitched the family tent. They made their mother as comfortable as they could and sought out their father, but high wind and blowing snow had delayed the wagons, so the children returned to the tent.
About a foot and a half of snow buried the camp near Red Buttes that night. When Heber located his father the following morning the man was “under a wagon with snow all over him and he was stiff and dead. I felt as though my heart would burst[.] I sat down beside him on the snow and took hold of one of his hands and cried oh Father Father[.] there we was away out on the Plains with hardly anything to eat and Father dead and mother sick.”
The company, now snowbound in central Wyoming, could barely sustain itself to keep fires burning, and make meager meals. “[I]t seemed as though death would be a blessing,” Heber McBride wrote.
Martin’s party had stalled just west of the North Platte Crossing. The weather was too cold, their food too limited, their bodies and their wills giving out as winter storms dumped more snow on their camp.
“Captain Martin looked sorrowful and care worn,” wrote Bond, “but was as firm as the hills that assistance would soon arrive to help all the famishing ones.” Though the people did not lose faith, still hundreds of miles from Utah they did begin to give up hope. “[W]e used to pray that we might die to get out of our misery,” wrote Heber McBride.
Willie’s Company is Also Stranded
Ahead of Martin’s Company, the Willie Handcart Company also suffered in the early cold and snow.
Lacking food and adequate clothing, the weaker among them began to fall.
As John Chislett, who wrote the official journal, recorded, "Every death weakened our forces. In my hundred I could not raise enough men to pitch a tent when we camped."
They were about 100 miles farther west on the trail when the storm hit them on October 19, 1856, as they traveled along the Sweetwater River.
They ate the last of their food supply and huddled in their crudely pitched tents, praying for help.
Rescue, At Last
A party of missionaries had overtaken both the Martin and Willie companies when they were still on the plains in Nebraska. This group, traveling with a light wagon and faster horses, reached Great Salt Lake City in early October. They informed Brigham Young of the plight of the handcart companies and he organized an immediate rescue effort. Calling for young men with fresh teams and wagons, he implored the women of the territory to bring warm clothing, blankets, and food.
The rescue wagons set out from Great Salt Lake within days, traveling to Fort Bridger, expecting daily to encounter the travelers with Willie and then Martin. When near South Pass and still seeing no sign of the handcarts, an advance rescue team split from the main force, riding faster horses as they sought the missing walkers. These men finally found Willie’s party, huddled in starving misery at the Sixth Crossing of the Sweetwater, two-days travel east of South Pass. The relief wagons reached them just days later, providing food and aid that helped Willie and his people continue their journey west.
The advance riders then continued back along the trail. Day after day they expected to find Martin’s Company but there was no sign of them at Split Rock, nor at Devils Gate. Finally, the rescue guard came upon the huddled, starving, freezing pioneers still in their camp near Red Buttes.
Told there were wagons with food and warm clothing many miles to the west, the McBride and Sermon families, and others with Martin, picked up their carts and again took to the trail west, crossing the Rock Avenue (also called the Devil’s Backbone), and passing Willow Springs to camp at Horse Creek, where, finally, the rescue wagons met them.
Nourished by the food, and with the benefit of blankets and clothing, including shoes, they again picked up their carts, following the trail past Independence Rock to Devils Gate and the abandoned buildings of an old trading post known as Seminoe’s Fort. Now, however, the weather turned bitterly cold again and they went into camp, staying only briefly near the fort—which was much too small to provide shelter for all of them—before wading the icy Sweetwater River and taking refuge in the Rattlesnake Mountains at a place later known as Martin’s Cove.
Rescuers aided them, but they had far too little food and far too few wagons. To remain at Devils Gate or Martin’s Cove for the winter meant almost certain death for all, so when the weather broke, they again set out for Salt Lake City. This time many of the carts were abandoned. The weakest, sickest people were loaded into wagons (including rescue wagons and Hunt and Hodgetts wagons that had been unloaded). The remainder walked, a few still dragging carts with supplies.
Heber and Janetta McBride continued on foot, while their mother and siblings were placed in a wagon. Elizabeth Sermon and her children also walked, but Joseph’s health had failed so much that he was in a wagon until they had crossed the Sweetwater River for the last time. That day Joseph Sermon and eight other men died. Elizabeth sewed her husband into a quilt, leaving his clothes on, but taking his boots, which she wore herself as she trudged toward Great Salt Lake with the children.
Five-year-old Robert Sermon froze his feet, and his mother used her scissors to cut away the dead skin “until the poor boy’s feet were nearly all gone.”
Others were not so lucky; by the time additional rescue wagons reached them, the Martin Company had buried around 144 people. Another 30 people would die before they reached Salt Lake City. In the Willie Company, around 70 people died on the crossing, nine of them within days of reaching the city.
The Willie Company arrived in Salt Lake on November 9 while Martin’s Company did not get there until November 30.
Twenty of the rescue party had remained behind at Devils Gate to guard the goods left there by the Hunt and Hodgetts wagon trains, which continued traveling with the Martin Company. Those rescuers almost starved to death that winter, making it through in part because of aid provided by Shoshone Indians.
Despite the disastrous crossings of Willie and Martin – the worst single disasters encountered by any overland travelers – the church continued supporting the handcart scheme. From 1857 until 1860 another five companies of people from the British Isles and the Scandinavian countries trudged the trail with their two-wheeled carts. More would die, but the majority safely reached Utah.
Candy Moulton is the author of The Mormon Handcart Companies:‘Tounge nor pen can Never Tell the Sorrow.’ She can be reached at Candy.L.Moulton@gmail.com
