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Redick Allred

After the Saints were forced to leave Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1846, Redick Allred enlisted in the Mormon Battalion. This willingness to make sacrifices for his Church would be a hallmark of his life. When asked in 1852 if he would serve a mission to the Sandwich Islands (known today as the Hawaiian Islands), he didn’t hesitate. He served for three years.

In 1856, Redick was living in Kaysville, Utah. When he heard that two handcart companies were late on the plains and in peril for their lives, his heart went out to these people. “I responded to a call [from] the brethren to assist them,” he wrote in his journal, as they were “likely to be caught in the mountains in the snow without provisions and the necessary clothing.”

Redick Allred borrowed a pony and left on October 7 as part of George Grant’s rescue company. The next day, Redick took cold and suffered “a severe pain in my breast that lasted one month that was almost like taking my life.” Even as he suffered, he pressed forward and fulfilled some of the most difficult assignments of the rescue effort.

On October 18 the rescuers crossed South Pass and camped on the Sweetwater River. “It snowed and was quite cold,” Redick wrote. When most of the rescuers continued east the next day, George Grant asked Redick to remain in camp and establish a station to help the handcart companies as the other rescuers brought them through. Redick was given charge of a small group of men, wagons, and animals at this station. He butchered some of the animals and kept the meat frozen in the bitter cold.

On October 23, Redick received an express from William Kimball telling him that the rescuers had found the Willie company and asking him to hurry forward with assistance. Redick left early the next morning, leading six supply wagons 15 miles to the Willie company’s camp. “I found some dead and dying,” he observed. “The drifting snow . . . was being piled in heaps by the gale & [they were] burying their dead.” Redick and his men did all they could to help. The next day they all moved ahead to Redick’s station near South Pass.

George Grant had originally told Redick Allred that he could return to Salt Lake City “with the first train.” But Captain Grant sent word with William Kimball that Redick should remain at his station until the later companies came through, “as their lives depended upon it.” It was a long, tedious wait. During that time, two men tried to induce Redick to go home, but he refused, committed to do his duty.

Redick Allred remained in this camp for a month before George Grant finally arrived with the Martin company on November 17. When George Grant saw that Redick had remained faithful to his assignment, he saluted him with, “Hurrah for the Bull Dog—good for a hang on.”  The next day, Redick broke camp and “set out for the city with this half-starved, half-frozen, and almost entirely exhausted company of about 500 saints.” By the time he arrived home, he had lost his toenails to the frost. “Thus ended one of the hardest & most successful missions I had ever performed,” he wrote.

Redick Allred was a farmer for most of his life. He also loved serving in the Church and community. He died in 1905 in Chester, Utah, a town where he had served for 10 years as bishop. He was a patriarch in the Church at the time of his passing.

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Mette Mortensen

The Peder and Lena Mortensen family joined the Church in Denmark in 1855. “As soon as my father and mother heard the gospel they were not very long in accepting it,” their daughter Mette recalled. Soon after joining the Church, the Mortensens decided to sell their substantial home and farm and gather to Zion. With seven children ages 5 to 24, they left what Mette called their “happy little home” and sailed to England (the oldest son stayed in Denmark to serve a mission and emigrated later). In Liverpool they boarded the Thornton to sail to America. Mette turned 11 on the day her family boarded the ship.

After reaching America, the Mortensens went to Iowa City, intending to get outfitted with a wagon and team to continue the journey. The family had the means to do so, but Church leaders made a proposal and promise that steered their course in an unexpected direction. They asked Peder if he would use his means to help pay the way of other needy Saints and promised that if his family would “join the handcart company, not one member of his family should be lost.” The Mortensens decided to forgo their comfort for the greater good of others. This was a doubly difficult decision because Peder and his oldest daughter were crippled, he severely and she with an arthritic knee. They were promised they could ride in a supply wagon.

Now very limited in what they could bring, the Mortensens left much of their clothing and bedding behind. The months ahead required great additional sacrifice, as well as suffering from hunger and cold. “How well I remember when the food supply began to get short,” Mette later wrote. “We had always had plenty of good food at home and this was hard for me to understand.”

The journey was especially trying and even frightening one day when Mette’s brothers pulled out of the line of handcarts and said they couldn’t go a step farther. “We children stood by crying, thinking of the terrors in store for us,” Mette remembered. When their mother gave the boys a little crust of bread and something to drink, it lifted their spirits. With her encouragement, they got their cart back onto the trail and continued forward.

After the long day’s journey over Rocky Ridge, Mette’s brothers helped dig the grave where 13 members of the company were buried. In an act of tenderness, Mette’s mother laid one of her hand-woven linen sheets on the bodies before they were covered with earth.

As promised, Peder and Lena Mortensen and their children arrived safely in Zion. They settled in Parowan, Utah. Mette was married several years later and raised nine children.

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Sarah James

Sarah James, age 19, was the oldest of eight children of William and Jane James. Sarah and two of her younger sisters, Emma and Mary Ann, later wrote recollections of their travels with the Willie handcart company. Of the three, Sarah’s recollections are the most poignant in telling what happened on the day they ascended Rocky Ridge.

Weak from hunger and exhaustion, members of the Willie company started from the base of Rocky Ridge early on the morning of October 23. The James family started a little bit later because William and his oldest son, 14-year-old Reuben, helped bury two people who had died the previous day. Soon after the burial service, Sarah led five younger siblings ahead to catch up with the rest of the company. They pulled the family’s lighter handcart.

When the burial work was finished, William, Jane, and Reuben set out, with Jane and Reuben pulling the family’s heavier cart. As William tried to follow, he collapsed in the snow. For the previous several weeks, he had been in declining health.

With Jane’s help, he tried to raise himself up but couldn’t do it. William assured Jane that he just needed to rest and asked her to go ahead and catch up with their children, so she left Reuben with his father and continued forward.

Eventually, Jane met up with her children on the bank of an icy creek. Feeling keenly the charge to look after the safety of her young brothers and sisters, Sarah had stopped there to wait for help. “We were too frightened and tired to cross alone,” Sarah remembered. Their mother helped them get across, and then they forged ahead.

When Jane and her children reached camp that night, they asked if anyone knew about William and Reuben. No one did. At about midnight, some of the rescuers went back on the trail to help those who lagged behind. “We felt that they would come with the next group,” Sarah wrote. “All night we waited for word.”  Mary Ann, a younger sister, remembered, “We watched and listened for their coming, hoping and praying for the best.”

But the best was not to be. When the wagons finally came into camp, the last one at 5:00 a.m., one of them was carrying the frozen body of William James. Later that day he was buried with 12 others. Reuben was badly frozen and only partly conscious, but he survived. During this most difficult time, Jane James showed valiant faith and courage. “When it was time to move out [the next day,] Mother had her family ready to go,” Sarah said. “She put her invalid son in the cart with her baby and we joined the train. Our mother was a strong woman and she would see us through anything.”

Sarah James suffered tragic losses on her journey to Zion. A baby sister died on the voyage, and her father died on Rocky Ridge, but Sarah, her mother, and her six other siblings all survived. Sarah married the next year and eventually had six children. She lived to be 84 years old, faithful to the end.

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Emily Hill

(Picture titled “As Sisters in Zion” by William Whitaker of Julia and Emily Hill.)

When Emily Hill was 12 years old, she became interested in the Church, but her parents were very opposed to her interest. She was finally baptized when she was 16, along with her 19-year-old sister, Julia. Four years later, Emily and Julia left England to gather with the Saints. After reaching America, they traveled to Iowa City and started west with the Willie handcart company. Although the journey seemed daunting, Emily steeled herself for it. “I made up my mind to pull a handcart,” she wrote later. “A foot journey from Iowa to Utah, and pull our luggage, think of it!” Julia was unable to walk for part of the way and had to be carried in a handcart.

Emily became a poet of some accomplishment and left a record of her handcart journey in a poem she wrote in 1881 titled “Hunger and Cold.” The poem described the Sixth Crossing camp, when the last of the company’s rations had “utterly vanished”:

Not a morsel to eat could we anywhere see, Cold, weary and hungry and helpless were we.

The surroundings were “desolate,” with nothing in view but “snow covered ground.” She wrote that the company could just as well have been adrift in the middle of the ocean, “shut off from the world” as they were. Nevertheless, they maintained hope and trusted in God:

On the brink of the tomb few succumbed to despair. Our trust was in God, and our strength was in prayer.

When the rescuers arrived, Emily remembered hearing their shouts and cheers as they entered the camp:

Oh, whence came those shouts in the still, starry night, That thrilled us and filled us with hope and delight?

The “Boys from the Valley” were their “saviors,” and the camp cheered them loud and long. These rescuers had soft hearts and courage “like steel” to leave their homes and undertake such a difficult task. “They rushed to our rescue, what more could they do?” Emily asked. When the rescuers saw the condition of the people, they wept “like children.” They quickly started cooking fires and preparing “nourishing food.” Emily never forgot the selfless sacrifice of these men:

God bless them for heroes, the tender and bold, Who rescued our remnant from hunger and cold.

Years later, Emily said that she never would have reached the “city of the Saints” had it not been for the “compassionate people of Utah,” who donated food and clothing, and for the rescuers, who sacrificed so much to help them.

During her life in Utah, Emily had 10 children and became a prolific poet. She wrote the words to the hymn “As Sisters in Zion.”

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John Oborn

John Oborn’s family joined the Church in 1843 and soon thereafter felt prompted to gather to Zion. However, their very limited means didn’t allow them to act on these promptings until 1856. John, the youngest son in the family, was 12 years old at the time. The family sailed to America and then traveled by train and boat from New York to Iowa City.

Of the Willie company’s journey across the plains, John later wrote, “God only can understand and realize the torture and privation, exposure, and starvation that we went through.” Conditions were so bad at the Sixth Crossing camp that John described it as “the most terrible experience of my life.” With their rations gone and winter upon them, it was hard to think they could survive. “We had resorted to the eating of anything that could be chewed, bark and leaves from trees, etc.,” John recalled. “We youngsters ate the rawhide from our boots. It seemed to sustain life and we were very thankful to get it.”

As John later remembered this life-or-death situation, the coming of the rescuers remained vivid: “When it seemed all would be lost, . . . and there seemed little left to live for, like a thunderbolt out of the clear sky, God answered our prayers.” The rescuers brought life-giving food and supplies. John remembered that one of the men was particularly kind to their family: “He seemed like an angel from heaven. We left our handcart and rode in his wagon, and slowly but safely he brought us to Zion.” John’s father, however, died just 10 days before the family reached the Salt Lake Valley, giving “his life cheerfully and without hesitation, for the cause that he espoused. We buried him in a lonely grave.” John remained a faithful member of the Church for the rest of his life.

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Mary Hurren

Mary Hurren was 7 years old when she left England with her father, mother, and two younger sisters. Other family members who accompanied them were her grandfather, David Reeder; her aunt, Caroline Reeder; and her uncle, Robert Reeder.

In the beginning, each day brought new adventures and fun for Mary. There were other young children to play with, and her Aunt Caroline was especially kind. But the journey became more difficult as time went on. First her grandfather, who had been weak for some time, died when the company was just west of Fort Laramie. Two weeks later, her aunt, who was only 17 years old, died and was buried near Independence Rock.

With little food remaining, the people grew weaker. By the time they reached the Sixth Crossing of the Sweetwater, most of their provisions were gone. One morning, Mary’s father uncovered a piece of rawhide, about a foot square,
in the snow. He scraped off the hair, cut the rawhide in small strips, and boiled it. Mary chewed the pieces of boiled rawhide like it was gum, sucking out what flavor and nourishment she could get.

The last scraps of food were distributed on the morning that James Willie and Joseph Elder set out from the Sixth Crossing camp to search for the rescuers. “The people were freezing and starving to death,” remembered Mary. “If help had not come when it did, there would have been no one left to tell the tale.”

The company’s prayers were answered the next day when the rescue wagons arrived. For the rest of her life, Mary had a joyful memory of that time:

As a small girl I could hear the squeaking of the wagons as they came through the snow before I was able to see them. Tears streamed down the cheeks of the men, and the children danced for joy. As soon as the people could control their feelings, they all knelt down in the snow and gave thanks to God for his kindness and goodness unto them. . . . [The rescuers] came just in time to save our lives.

But hard times weren’t over for young Mary. On the trail, her shoes had almost worn out, and her feet and legs were frozen. To keep her legs warm, her mother had wrapped them in rags. When the family reached Salt Lake City, Mary’s mother bathed her legs and feet with warm water to remove the rags. Her condition was so bad that doctors didn’t expect her to live more than a day or two. They later told her father that the only way to save her life was to have her lower limbs amputated. Her father objected, saying that “his little girl had not walked for a thousand miles across the plains to have her legs cut off .”

Mary’s parents did everything they could to restore health to her limbs. The flesh fell away from the calves of her legs, and the process of healing was difficult. “It was three long years before I was able to walk,” Mary said her feet hurt for the rest of her life. Nevertheless, she was grateful for even the hard things she had experienced. She said that if she had her life to live over again, “I would not want it any different.”  She lived to be 88 years old and became the mother of 13 children.

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George Cunningham

George Cunningham was 15 years old when he left his native Scotland with his parents and three sisters to gather to Zion. George had begun working in a coal pit when he was only 7 years old to help support his family. He worked there for 6 years, sometimes for 12 to 14 hours a day. The air was bad in the coal pit, and he sometimes wouldn’t see the sun except on Sunday, his only day off.

His family, who had joined the Church shortly after George’s birth, was grateful when the way opened for them to emigrate. George thanked God for his blessings when he arrived in America, a country he had been taught to believe was a “land of promise.”  Twenty years after arriving in America, George wrote a detailed reminiscence that included memories of his experiences with the Willie company. He recorded that while the company was crossing Iowa, “people would mock, sneer, and deride us on every occasion for being such fools as they termed us, and would often throw out inducements to get us to stop. But we told them we were going to Zion and would not stop on any account.”

George, who was a teenager at the time, didn’t allow the mockery to deter him. “People would turn out in crowds to laugh at us, crying ‘gee’ and ‘haw’ as if we were oxen. But this did not discourage us in the least, for we knew that we were on the right track. That was enough.”  George was able to give a glimmer of hope to the Willie company at a difficult time in their journey. On October 18 the company camped at the Fifth Crossing of the Sweetwater and had issued the last of the flour, leaving only one day’s rations of crackers. With people becoming weaker every day, many would die unless rescue came soon. On October 19 the Willie company had to leave the Fifth Crossing and travel 16½ miles to meet the river again at the Sixth Crossing. The day dawned very cold, and some of the children who had been crying with hunger were now also crying because of the cold. After the people had traveled a few miles, a snowstorm blasted them for about half an hour. While the company stopped to wait out the storm, George kept looking expectantly to the west. The previous night, he’d had a vivid dream. In this dream, the people “had started out on the road” in the morning. It had begun to snow, but “the storm had subsided some.” George continued:

“I thought that I saw two men coming toward us on horseback. They were riding very swiftly and soon came up to us. They said that they had volunteered to come to our rescue and that they would go on further east to meet a company which was still behind us and that on the morrow, we could meet a number of wagons loaded with provisions for us. They were dressed in blue soldier overcoats and had Spanish saddles on their horses. I examined them, particularly the saddles, as they were new to me. I also could discern every expression of their countenance. They seemed to rejoice and be exceedingly glad that they had come to our relief and saved us.”

That day, George was amazed when he actually saw two men, like those he had dreamed about, riding fast toward the company. He called out for everyone to look. “Here they come! See them coming over that hill,” he cried. Two men on horseback and two others in a light wagon quickly rode into camp. These men were Joseph A. Young, Cyrus Wheelock, Stephen Taylor, and Abel Garr—members of George Grant’s rescue company. Five days earlier, George Grant had sent these men ahead as an express to find the handcart Saints. Members of the Willie company were overjoyed to see them. “[They] brought us the cheering intelligence that assistance was near at hand,” William Woodward recalled, and “that several wagons loaded with flour, onions, & clothing, including bedding, were within a day’s drive of us.”

“They were saviors coming to [our] relief,” wrote Joseph Elder. The people told George Cunningham that he “was a true dreamer, and we all felt that we should thank God.”  After reaching Utah, the Cunningham family went to American Fork, where George lived the rest of his life. He married Mary Wrigley in 1863, and they became parents of 13 children. During his life he worked at day labor and railroad construction, owned a butcher shop, and was a teamster. He was faithful in the Church and active in community and political affairs. As a boy, George Cunningham had come to America, dreaming of a better life and wanting to live among others who held his same religious beliefs. From his experiences, he learned that “the nearer he lived to God, the better he felt.”