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.