Author: Chris York

From Langley Bailey’s account:

“My father went to gather some brush willows, there being no wood, to keep me warm. His hands became very “benumbed,” [and] he laid down by my side, told mother he was going to die. (It was not any trouble to die.) Mother took hold of him, gave him a shaken up, and told him she was going on to the valley. This wakened him from his stupor and gave him reason to try to stay alive.”

Jane Allgood Bailey wasn’t about to give up the light of her new religion. She would not be defeated by the cold, starvation, and sickness on the plains of Wyoming. She grasped hands with other women to wade through icy streams. They came out on the other side with their clothes frozen to them, but they carried on.

On the trek, her 18-year-old son, Langley, became so ill and weak that he had to be carried on the handcart much of the way. One morning he rose from his bed on the cart, which had frozen canvas for bedding, and went ahead of the company to lay down under a sagebrush and die, feeling that he was too much of a burden. When his faithful mother found him, she scolded him and told him: “Get on the cart. I’ll help you, but you’re not giving up!” Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, Langley was still alive, but he weighed only about 60 pounds.

Sarah Ann Jones was introduced to the Gospel by a son from her first marriage and then shared it with the sons from her second marriage. At the age of 55 her second marriage had ended, and she and two teenage sons, Samuel and Albert, decided to gather to Zion and came in the Martin Handcart Company. While they were camped in Martin’s Cove there was very little to eat, but even in their extremity, people reached out to succor each other in pure acts of charity. William Spicer and his wife Elizabeth were traveling in the Hunt Wagon Company, which was close to the Martin Company most of the time. When the bitter winter snows hit the Martin Handcart Company as they attempted to cross the Platte River on October 19, he and others helped many of the Saints across. In his account he states [he had] “carried many on my back, and assisted others with their carts, making about sixty trips across the water.”

When the Hunt Wagon Company finally reached Fort Seminoe, he visited the handcart camp in Martin’s Ravine. He stopped at one of the tents where Sarah Ann Jones’ family was just starting to eat their “scanty meal.” Sarah Ann procured another cup for Spicer and asked her children to take a little from each of their cups to share with their guest.

“Not many mothers could or would do that,” Spicer remembered gratefully. “I was hungry and am ever thankful.”

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.

Ellen Breakel was born at Preston, Lancashire, England on February 28, 1811. Her father was a very wealthy English farmer, but Ellen wanted to work because her friends and associates were working. Ellen married Alexander Neibaur, a French and Polish Jew who had been educated to become a rabbi before joining the church.

In 1841, the first organized company of Saints left England on the ship Sheffield, and the Neibaurs were among the Saints on that ship. At that time they had three children who they brought with them, having already lost one baby and buried it in England. Ellen was sick the entire seven weeks it took to cross the ocean, and she never once came up on deck during the whole voyage. They landed at New Orleans, and went directly to Nauvoo. There Alexander Neibaur met the Prophet Joseph Smith and taught him the Hebrew and German languages.

They were in Nauvoo at the time of the great persecution of the Saints, and in 1846, when the mob made the raid on the Saints, Ellen Neibaur, with a 10 day old baby and six other children were driven from their home.
In May 1848, they left Winter Quarters in the Brigham Young Company and arrived in Salt Lake City, September 20, 1848. After their arrival in the valley, the family lived in a tent during the fall and winter of 1848. It was the most they had ever suffered, and often the children went hungry.

When Spring came, the father built a small hut, 12′ by 14,’ and they moved into it just before their 10th child was born. When they became more settled and began to make a little money, Alexander bought his wife a nice pair of shoes, and she knitted herself some stockings that were blue and white striped. She was very proud of them and thought they were very pretty.

She had only had them for a short time when the Brethren came around collecting clothing to take with them to meet the pioneers of the Martin Handcart Company. When they came to their house, Alexander said he had nothing to give them, but Ellen answered, “Yes, we must give something,” and she took from her feet the pair of new shoes and stockings and gave them to the Brethren, binding her own feet in rags.

When the handcart company of Saints arrived in Salt Lake, people turned out to welcome them. Among them was an old friend of Ellen’s that she had known in England . . . and she was wearing Ellen’s shoes and stockings!