I was asked to speak today in church. Lisa Farman spoke first, then me and then mom was the concluding speaker. Surprisingly even though we all spoke of Pioneers, none of us repeated what the other had said. Everyone brought in different and interesting information. Mine came from Russell Ballard's July 1997 "Faith in Every Footstep" address and President Hinckley's July 1984 "The Faith of the Pioneers".
Below is an excerpt:
Pioneer Day commemorates the day Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. This day is celebrated to honor the bravery, strength of character and physical endurance of the original settlers.
The vast majority of the Utah pioneers got their first glimpse of the sagebrush and desert landscape of the Salt Lake Valley on foot. Before the railroad reached the Utah Territory in 1869, approximately 70,000 pioneers, 9,600 wagons, and 650 handcarts made the trek from Winter Quarters in present-day Iowa and Nebraska to the Salt Lake Valley.
By 1856, the expense of outfitting several thousand immigrants each year with the covered wagons and livestock was becoming too great for the pioneers and for the Church. Leaders decided to furnish immigrants with small two-wheeled carts, close in size to those used by apple peddlers in Eastern cities, which could be pulled and pushed by hand to the Salt Lake Valley. Although the Latter-day Saints did not invent this method of crossing the plains (some gold-rushers had used wheelbarrows and handcarts as early as 1850), their development of this method became the most remarkable travel experiment in the settlement of the American frontier.
The idea seemed so practical that nineteen hundred people signed up for the handcart immigration in 1856, traveling by train from the ports of Boston and New York City to Iowa City, Iowa, where the handcarts were waiting.
The handcart era lasted only five years, bringing about 3,000 Saints to the Valley. Out of the ten handcart companies that were organized, eight arrived safely and with little difficulty. Two companies in 1856, however, under the leadership of James G. Willie and Edward Martin, started too late and suffered terrible hardships in early winter storms in Wyoming. Rescue teams were sent out from Salt Lake City, but they did not arrive in time to prevent many deaths from exposure and malnutrition. Of the approximately one thousand immigrants in these two companies, more than two hundred died.
Small though their total numbers were, the 3,000 handcart pioneers carved a monument of legendary proportions in the minds and hearts of the entire Mormon people.
