This week we celebrated Pioneer Day. What is a pioneer?
- a person who has great strength and courage and is willing to sacrifice for what he believes?
- someone who leads and makes it easier for those who follow?
Early members of our church where persecuted and harmed because of what they believed. They were forced to leave their homes and make the long journey to settle in Utah where they could worship freely. Do you think it was easy to give up everything and walk thousands of miles in cold, harsh weather? Do you think they had to sacrifice because they believed the gospel? Did they have courage to face the trials on the trail?
SONG: Whenever I think about Pioneers (CS 222)
Today we are going to take a journey outside and hear lots of stories of the pioneers and sing songs about the things they did or believed in. The pioneer children back then had to walk most of the way to the valley of SaltLake, but today you will only have to walk outside.
SONG: Pioneer Children Sang as the Walked(CS 214)
(Gather outside and sit on blankets as a class if possible. Have six sticks of firewood with the following words taped on: cheerfulness, faith, love, strength, courage, faith. Read the applicable story followed by a song. Serve biscuits afterward)
Cheerfulness:
Story – Through the Hole-in-the-rock (
Song – If you’re happy and you know it (CS 266) or When you’re helping you’re happy (CS 197)
Faith:
Story – Mary Fielding Smith finding her lost ox by praying
Song –When I pray in Faith (CS 14) or Faith is like a little Seed (CS 96)
Faith:
Story – Mary Bathgate and the snakebite healed through priesthood power
Song – The Priesthood is Restored (CS 89)
Love:
Story – Jacob Hamblin riding back to find his girl’s lost doll
Song – Happy Family (CS 198) or Love one Another (CS 136)
Strength:
Story – Margaret Ballard carrying her brother on her back milking the cow everyday
Song – I have two little hands (CS 272)
Courage:
Story – Three Young Men Rescue the Martin Handcart Company
Song – Dare to do Right (CS 158) or Jesus Wants me for a Sunbeam(CS 60) or Give said the Little Stream (CS 236)
All of these pioneer stories showed great courage and faith. Do we have to walk a thousand miles in freezing cold weather or face snakes and other diseases to be a pioneer? Do we have to be the first in our family to join the church and face opposition to be considered a pioneer?
What where the two things we said a pioneer did? 1. had faith, courage and made sacrifice & 2. make the way easier for someone to follow. We can all be pioneers and have faith to bear our testimonies or to sacrifice things for what we believe. We can all have courage to stand up for what we believe and make it easier for somebody else to make good choices too.
(Bear testimony and share personal experience if time.)
SONG: To be a pioneer (CS 218)
The Grumbler Handler
In early Church history the handcart pioneers who traveled from Nauvoo to the SaltLakeValley tried to make their journey a happy one. Some even painted their handcarts with such signs as “Zion’s Express,” “Blessings Follow Sacrifice,” and “Merry Mormons”; and they sang songs to keep themselves in happy spirits while they traveled.
Their journey was a hard one; and people were often tired, sick, and hungry. The trail was hot and dusty, and the pioneers had to walk all the way pushing and pulling their handcarts. Because the journey was so difficult, some grumbled and a few continually complained about conditions that could not be changed. The captain in one Handcart Company appointed an official “Grumbler Handler.” Members of the company having any complaints were sent to him and were ordered to pay one pound of flour for every complaint they registered. A few went to him and took their flour to pay him for listening to their complaints; he listened, but he never kept any of their precious flour. Talking to the “Grumbler Handler” seemed to make them feel better and ended much of their complaining in the camp.
Mary Fielding Smith
After Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were martyred, Hyrum’s wife, Mary Fielding Smith, left Nauvoo and traveled to Winter Quarters. On the way back, Mary and her family camped near the Missouri River. Camping nearby were some men who were driving a herd of cattle to market. Mary’s son, Joseph F., and his uncle usually unyoked their oxen at night so the oxen could eat and rest more easily, but because they were so close to the other herd of cattle they left the yokes on the oxen. That way the oxen would be easy to find if they got mixed in with the other animals.
The next morning some of the oxen were missing. Joseph F. and his uncle spent all morning looking for them, but they could not find them. As Joseph F. returned to the camp, tired and discouraged, he saw his mother kneeling in prayer. He heard her asking the Lord to help them find the lost oxen so they could continue their journey in safety.
When Mary finished her prayer, she had a smile on her face. Although her brother said the cattle were surely gone for good, Mary said she would go out and look for a while. Her brother tried to convince her that he and Joseph F. had searched everywhere and it was useless for her to search also, but she went anyway. As Mary walked away from her camp, one of the men taking the cattle to market called out, “Madam, I saw your oxen over in that direction this morning about daybreak.” Although the man was pointing in the opposite direction, Mary continued walking toward the river. Joseph F. was watching her, and he came running when she beckoned to him. When he came near her, he saw their oxen tied to a clump of willows. Someone had hidden them, probably with the intention of stealing them. With their oxen found, Mary Fielding Smith and her family were able to continue their journey. (See Don Cecil Corbett, Mary Fielding Smith: Daughter of Britain, pp. 209–13.)
The Mishaps of Mary Bathgate and Isabella Parks
[On 16 August 1856 on the pioneer trail] Sister Mary Bathgate was badly bitten by a large rattlesnake, just above the ankle, on the back part of her leg. She [and Sister Isabella Park were] about half a mile ahead of the camp at the time it happened. . . . They were both old women, over sixty years of age, and neither of them had ridden one inch since they had left Iowa campground. Sister Bathgate sent a little girl hurrying back to have me and Brothers Leonard and Crandall come with all haste, and bring the oil with us, for she was bitten badly.
As soon as we heard the news, we left all things, and, with the oil, we went posthaste. When we got to her she was quite sick, but said that there was power in the priesthood, and she knew it. So we took a pocketknife, cut the wound larger, and squeezed out all the bad blood we could. . . . We then . . . anointed her . . . and laid our hands on her in the name of Jesus, and felt to rebuke the influence of the poison, and she felt full of faith. We then told her that she must get into the wagon, so she called witnesses to prove that she did not get into the wagon until she was compelled to because of the cursed snake. We started on and traveled two miles, when we stopped to take some refreshment. Sister Bathgate continued to be quite sick, but was full of faith, and after stopping one and a half hours we hitched up our teams. As the word was given for the teams to start, old Sister Isabella Park ran in before the wagon to see how her companion was. The driver, not seeing her, hallooed at his team, and they being quick to mind, SisterPark could not get out of the way, and the fore wheel struck her and threw her down and passed over both her hips. Brother Leonard grabbed hold of her to pull her out of the way, before the hind wheel could catch her. He only got her part way and the hind wheel passed over her ankles.
We all thought that she would be all mashed to pieces, but to the joy of us all, there was not a bone broken, although the wagon had something like two tons burden on it, a load for four yoke of oxen. We went right to work and applied the same medicine to her that we did to the sister who was bitten by the rattlesnake, and although quite sore for a few days, Sister Park got better, so that she was [back walking] before we got into the Valley, and Sister Bathgate was right by her side, to cheer her up.
(as quoted in Jack M. Lyon, Linda Ririe Gundry, and Jay A. Parry, Best-Loved Stories of the LDS People, [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1997], p. 98.)
Jacob Hamblin
“As a young girl, Ella’s most treasured possession was a pretty cloth or rag doll, whose face and hands were made of china. She always cuddled it beside her as they journeyed in their wagon, and she would put it to bed at night in a special place nearby.
“One morning the family was awakened early before daybreak and urged to break camp as quickly as possible because of the long journey and hot weather that lay ahead that day. Still half asleep, Ella was placed in the wagon and continued sleeping for the next several hours. By the time she was fully awake and aware of what had happened, they were already several miles into their journey. It was then that she realized her treasured doll was missing. ‘We’ve got to go back and get my dolly,’ she told her mother, who knew that it was out of the question. It was too far and the men and animals were already getting tired. Ella continued to plead for some time, but to no avail. ‘We’ll get you another doll,’ her mother said, but that didn’t stop the tears.
“When Jacob finally heard the crying child in the wagon, he rode up on his horse and asked what was wrong. He listened quietly as Ella explained where she had put the doll to rest on a bed of pine needles at the foot of the big rock where they had camped the night before. He told her he would try to find it and not to cry any more. She watched as he turned his horse and rode back down the long trail from whence they had come.
“The party set up camp that afternoon at the top of a long grade, and Ella sat down to watch the trail for any sign of her father’s return. When Jacob finally appeared in the distance and eventually got close enough to tether his horse in some trees at the bottom of the grade, she still couldn’t see whether or not he had found her doll. He walked up the grade toward her, with his hands behind him. After kneeling down in front of her and looking into her eyes, he brought his hands from behind his back and there was her precious dolly!”
Margaret Ballard
On April 27, 1856, we left Liverpool, England, for America. There was a large company leaving. My mother was not well and was taken on board ship before the time of sailing, while the sailors were still disinfecting and renovating the ship. Here my brother Charles was born, with only one woman on board to attend to my mother.
When the captain and doctor came on board the ship and found that a baby had been born, they were delighted and thought it would bring good luck to the company. They asked the privilege of naming him. Brother James G. Willie, president of the company, thought it best to let the captain name him as there were three hundred passengers and nearly all of them were Mormons, so he was named Charles Collins Thornton McNeil, after the ship Thornton and Captain Charles Collins.
We were six weeks on the voyage. We landed at Castle Garden, New York. We were planning to go to Utah with the Willie handcart company, but Franklin D. Richards counseled my father not to go in that company, for which we were afterwards thankful because of the great suffering and privations, and cold weather which these people were subject to. There were many of the company who were frozen that year on the plains. They made their first stop in St. Louis, Missouri, and later, with other Saints, assisted in settling a place called Genoa, which was one hundred miles west of present-day Omaha, Nebraska. Along the way, the McNeils' team, which consisted of unbroken five-year-old oxen, ran away, and they were delayed.
The company had gone ahead, and my mother was anxious to have me go with them; so she strapped my little brother, James, on my back with a shawl. He was only four years old and was still quite sick with the measles. Mother had all she could do to care for the other children, so I hurried on and caught up with the company.
I traveled with them all day, and that night a kind lady helped me take my brother off my back. I sat up and held him in my lap with a shawl wrapped around him, alone all night. We traveled this way for about a week, my brother and I not seeing our mother during this time. Each morning one of the men would write a note and put it in the slit of a willow stuck in the ground to tell how we were getting along. The people in the camp were very good to us and gave us a little fried bacon and some bread for breakfast. Soon our family was reunited and began our trek across the plains in 1859. While crossing the plains, my mother's health was very poor, so I tried to assist her as much as I could. Every morning I would rise early and get breakfast for the family and milk my cow so that I could hurry and drive her on ahead of the company. Then I would let her eat in all the grassy places until the company had passed on ahead, when I would hurry and catch up with them. The cow furnished us with milk, our chief source of food, and it was very important to see that she was fed as well as circumstances would permit. Had it not been for the milk, we would have starved.
Three Young Men Rescue the Martin Handcart Company
On 28 July 1856 a handcart company under the leadership of Edward Martin left Iowa City, Iowa, and started across the plains to the SaltLakeValley.
By October, cold weather and snow caught them in the mountains in central Wyoming. Short on food and other supplies, members of the company experienced exposure to cold, hunger, and exhaustion, and some began to die. They would suffer more losses than any other pioneer handcart company.
Earlier in October, when Brigham Young learned that there were still many Saints out on the trail, he sent a rescue party with supplies to help bring the people to SaltLake. The Martin Company met up with rescue party members in late October and early November and received welcome but limited amounts of food and supplies. With the rescuers’ help, they struggled on toward SaltLake.
On 4 November they came to the SweetwaterRiver, near Devil’s Gate. The river was about 100 feet wide and almost waist deep in places. To make it worse, big chunks of ice were floating in the water. For the weakened members of the Martin Company, the crossing appeared almost impossible.
One of the handcart pioneers later remembered that some of the pioneers were able to ford the river, but others could not. At that point, several members of the rescue party—one account names C. Allen Huntington, Stephen W. Taylor, and teenagers David P. Kimball and George W. Grant—stepped forward to help. These courageous men “waded the river, helping the handcarts through and carrying the women and children and some of the weaker of the men over” (John Jaques, “Some Reminiscences,” Salt Lake Daily Herald, 15 Dec. 1878, 1; see also 19 Jan. 1879, 1).
One of the women who was carried over the river later recalled: “Those poor brethren [were] in the water nearly all day. We wanted to thank them, but they would not listen to [us]. My dear mother felt in her heart to bless them for their kindness. She said, ‘God bless you for taking me over this water and in such an awful, rough way.’ [They said], ‘Oh, … I don’t want any of that. You are welcome. We have come to help you.’ ” This sister also reported that one of the rescuers “stayed so long in the water that he had to be taken out and packed to camp, and he was a long time before he recovered, as he was chilled through. And in after life he was always afflicted with rheumatism” (Patience Loader Rozsa Archer, reminiscence, in Women’s Voices: An Untold History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900, ed. Kenneth W. Godfrey, Audrey M. Godfrey, and Jill Mulvay Derr [1982], 236; spelling and punctuation standardized).