GEMS-Teachings: President Gordon B. Hinckley on the Faith of the Pioneers
"I have often read the words of a thirteen-year-old girl, my wife's grandmother. I regard them as something of a classic. Her family was converted in Brighton, England, in 1856. They sold their possessions and sailed from Liverpool with 900 others on the vessel Horizon. After six weeks at sea they landed at Boston and then traveled by steam train to Iowa City for fitting out.
"There they purchased two yoke of oxen, one yoke of cows, a wagon, and a tent. They were assigned to travel with and assist one of the handcart companies.
"At Iowa City their first tragedy also occurred. Their youngest child, less than two years of age, suffering from exposure, died and was buried in a grave never again visited by a member of the family. My wife's grandmother, then a thirteen-year-old girl, wrote of their experiences:
"'We traveled from fifteen to twenty-five miles a day . . . till we got to the Platte River. . . . We caught up with the handcart companies that day. We watched them cross the river. There were great lumps of ice floating down the river. It was bitter cold. The next morning there were fourteen dead. . . . We went back to camp and had our prayers and . . . sang "Come, Come Ye Saints, No Toil Nor Labor Fear." I wondered what made my mother cry that night. . . . The next morning my little sister was born. It was the twenty-third of September. We named her Edith.
She lived six weeks and died. . . . She was buried at the last crossing of the Sweetwater.
" 'When we arrived at Devil's Gate it was bitter cold. We left many of our things there. . . . My brother James . . was as well as he ever was when we went to bed that night. In the
morning he was dead. . . .
" 'My feet were frozen; also my brother's and my sister's. It was nothing but snow. We could not
drive the pegs in our tents. . . . We did not know what would become of us. Then one night a man came to our camp and told us . . . Brigham Young had sent men and teams to help us. . . . We sang songs; some danced, and some cried. . . .
" 'My mother never got well. . . . She died between the Little and Big Mountains. . . . She was forty-three years of age. . . .
" 'We arrived in Salt Lake City nine o'clock at night the eleventh of December, 1856. Three out of the four that were living were frozen. My mother was dead in the wagon. . . .
" 'Early next morning Brigham Young came. . . . When he saw our condition, our feet frozen and our mother dead, tears rolled down his cheeks. . . .
" 'The doctor amputated my toes . . . while the sisters were dressing mother for her grave. . . . That afternoon she was buried.
" 'I have often thought of my mother's words before we left England. "Polly, I want to go to Zion while my children are small so that they can be raised in the Gospel of Jesus Christ" ' (Mary Goble Pay, ms. in possession of author)."
( "The Faith of the Pioneers," Ensign, July 1984, 5-6)
