The Trek

My family and I came from England to New York.
We then went by rail to Iowa where other

saints were gathering to form a handcart company.

I was fifteen years old and the middle
daughter of the family.
We were assigned to travel with the Martin Handcart Company
as a supply wagon.

Great lumps of ice were floating down the river.
It was bitter cold. The next morning there
were fourteen dead.
We went back to the camp and had our prayers and sang,
“Come, Come Ye Saints no toil nor labor fear.”

I wondered what made my mother cry that night.
The next morning, my little sister was born.
It was the twenty third of September.
We named her Edith. She lived six weeks, and died.
She was buried at the last crossing of the Sweat Water.

One time I became lost in the snow.
My feet and legs were frozen.
The men rubbed me with snow.
They put my feet in a bucket of water.
The pain was terrible.

When we arrived at Devil’s Gate, it was bitter cold.
We left many of our Saints there.
My brother, James, was as well as he ever was
when he went to bed that night.
In the morning, he was dead.
There were times
when six, eight, or ten died in a single night.
Each morning, the dead were buried beside the trail.

One night, eighteen died.
The ground was frozen hard,
and the snow was so deep
that one large grave was dug,
and all were buried together.