Amy Loader left England in November 1855 with her husband and six of their children ages 9 to 28. Not until after they arrived in New York did they learn they would travel to Utah in a handcart company. This disappointed them greatly, but they were constrained to join the Martin Handcart Company in which one of their married daughters was traveling with her husband and young family. When Amy’s husband, James, became weak well before they reached Florence, Amy and her older girls had to shoulder much of the work of pulling the cart.
It was hard for James to not be able to help, and on the days he felt able, he tried. But he grew ever weaker, and before reaching Chimney Rock, he died. He had so wanted to reach the valley to see one of their married daughters, Ann, who had emigrated the previous year. James and Amy were loving parents and they had a close family.
She screamed for men to help when she saw her daughters in danger of drowning when they were trying to get across the Platte River. She shared her own meager clothing to warm her children when they were freezing. She worried when her older daughters went searching for firewood. She cooked what little food her daughters could scrounge, whether it was a beef bone to make soup or some broth by boiling an old beef head.
After one of the bitterly cold nights when they were camped in the cove, Amy tried to get her daughters to arise and start a fire. “Come, Patience, get up and make us a fire,” she called. It was so cold, and Patience wasn’t feeling well, so she told her mother that she just couldn’t get up. Amy then asked her daughters Tamar and Maria to rise and make a fire, but each told their mother they couldn’t get up. It was too cold and they didn’t feel well. Amy worried about her daughters. Were they getting discouraged and about ready to give up? Others in the company were feeling like it would be easier to die than to live. She hoped and prayed that this wasn’t happening to her children. She needed to do something to get them up and moving about—something to put the snap of life back into them.
Amy got up and began dancing on the frozen snow, but she slipped and fell. Afraid she might have hurt herself, her daughters all jumped up. “We was afraid she was hurt,” Patience said. Seeing them come to her rescue, Amy laughed. She said, “I thought I could soon make you all jump up if I danced to you.” The girls realized their mother had fallen down on purpose. “She knew we would all get up to see if she was hurt,” Patience said. “She said that she was afraid her girls was going to give out and get discouraged.” She told them that “it would never do to give up.” Her grit and determination on that bitterly cold morning reinvigorated the spirits of her children.
“My dear Mother had kept up wonderful all through the journey,” stated Patience.