Welcome.

Born or baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, all members can rightfully claim connection to our marvelous Latter-day Saint pioneers.

Count me among those who love them.

Dearly.

They were exceptional individuals – a great many who paid costly prices to join with the saints of God and in so very many instances, suffered intense poverty, unjustifiable and unfair persecution, and trials of a million kinds.

I revere those who remained faithful at great personal peril.

Their stories inspire me, help me push forward during difficult days, and buoy me up with reassurance and spiritual fire.

Happy Pioneer Day – in honor of them.

I want to share three of my favorite pioneer stories. All stories are quoted directly.

Mary Murray Murdoch

“Mary was born to John and Margaret McCall Murray. On January 10, 1811, at the age of 28, she married James Murdoch, son of James Murdoch and Janet Osborne. They became the parents of eight children. Two of the children died in childhood. Her husband was employed at the Lime Works in Gaswater, Scotland, and lost his life on October 20, 1831, while trying to rescue a man who had become a victim of poisonous air in a mine shaft. (James was reportedly a second cousin of William Murdoch, the inventor of gas lighting.) Mary and her children were already accustomed to hard work. Mary’s energy and thrifty disposition were a great help to her in raising and providing for her fatherless children. A few years after her husband’s death, Mary was able, with the help of her sons, to build a little thatched-roof stone cottage. Mary’s son, John, married Ann Steele. Ann’s brother, James Steele, visited from England and shared his message about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. After he returned to England, he sent missionaries to Mary’s home. The family was baptized on December 22, 1851. Mary was 67 years old. John and Ann emigrated to Utah in 1852. It was a difficult journey for them and their two young children both died. In 1856, John sent money for his mother’s fare to join him in Zion. She was 73 years old, but she bravely sailed on the ship Horizon in May 1856. She traveled with James Steele, his wife, Elizabeth, their two young children, and Elizabeth’s mother, Mary Ann Wylie. Mary had a great deal of “Scottish” determination to undertake such an adventure at her age. She was known as “Wee Granny” as she was only 4 feet and 7 inches tall, and weighed only about 90 pounds. The anticipation of seeing her son, John, and his family after four years must have surely helped to motivate her. On the morning of October 3, 1856, word was sent through the camp that sister Mary Murray Murdoch had passed away during the night. The company was near Chimney Rock, Nebraska. Mary’s spirit was strong, but her body was not able to finish the journey to Zion to join her son, John. Mary would have been 74 years old in ten more days. She died just a couple of weeks short of the first debilitating winter storm of 1856 and was thus taken home by a kind Heavenly Father who spared her the further trauma that was just ahead for the Martin handcart company. Mary’s death was attended to by James Steele and his family. The last words spoken by Mary were a plea that her faithfulness and love would be made known to her son. She said, ‘Tell John I died with my face toward Zion.’”(https://www.tellmystorytoo.com/member_pdfs/mary-murray-murdoch_1260_593.pdf)

This woman – all of four feet and seven inches tall and about ninety pounds – is one of my greatest heroines. She died “with [her] face toward Zion.” She inspires me to live with my face toward Zion, and I love and thank her for it.

Levi Savage

“Unlike many of the handcart saints, Levi Savage was born in America, in Ohio in 1820.  His father and some of his family were baptized when he was 23.  Levi was not baptized for another three years, just before he joined the Mormon Battalion.

After his service in the Battalion, and upon his return the next year to the Salt Lake Valley over the Sierra Nevada range, he “encountered the grisly remains of the Donner Party. This group, headed toward California, had become snowbound and about half the party had died from exposure and starvation.  Bro. Savage came upon the scene, described as “ghastly,” and where “some of the dead still had not been buried,” so a few of the soldiers buried them. When he finally made it to Salt Lake, he was not reunited with his mother who had died in Iowa on her way to Zion.

Bro. Savage married Jane Mathers in 1848 and had a son about three years later.  His wife died less than a year after his son’s birth, and shortly before his son turned two years old, he was called on a mission to Thailand.  He left his little one with his sister and sailed from California to India to Burma.  He served in Burma for two years because of obstacles in getting to Thailand.  Preaching the gospel was very difficult when he had a hard time learning the language and had no Church materials in the native language.  After two and a half years away from his young son, he informed President Franklin D. Richards that his labors were “’under the most adverse and trying circumstances, with no other view but the advance of our Redeemer’s cause, but with very little success.  My faith has failed me, and I have become discouraged, and intend to leave for Zion as soon as possible.’”

While Levi was returning from his mission, he was appointed by Pres. Richards as a subcaptain over 100 people in the Willie handcart company.  He sailed from Burma to Boston and traveled to Iowa City, meeting the saints four days before they began their trek.  He was one of the few to keep a daily journal.

When the saints reached Florence, Nebraska and faced the decision of whether to proceed so late in the season, Levi Savage was perhaps the most vocal about the dangers of pressing forward.  This is understandable, considering his several thousand miles of trail experience and the memory of the Donner remains.  He was a man with faith in God, but he also believed people should exercise good judgment based on reason and experience.  His own journal records the following:  “’I . . . then related to the Saints the hardships that we should have to endure.  I said that we were liable to have to wade in snow up to our knees and shovel at night, lay ourselves in a thin blanket and lie on the frozen ground without a bed. . . .  The lateness of the season was my only objection to leaving . . . .  I spoke warmly upon the subject, but spoke truth.’” The young George Cunningham remembers, “’He counseled the old, weak, and sickly to stop until another spring.  The tears commenced to flow down his cheeks, and he prophesied that if such undertook the journey at that late season of the year, . . . their bones would strew the way.’”

After Bro. Savage’s tearful advice, other leaders publicly called into question his faith and essentially promised the saints a safe voyage if they continued.  They “’prophesied in the name of God that we should get through in safety” and that “[e]ven the elements he would arrange for our good.’” The saints perceived this response as a “rebuke” to Levi Savage. Later, when President Richards and other leaders met up with the Saints further in Nebraska, George Cunningham recounts that Bro. Savage “’was called up and was told that he would have to take back what he said at Florence . . . or be tried for his fellowship.  He was forced to do so.  But it reminded me of Galileo, the great Italian philosopher, who discovered that the sun stood still [but was forced to recant that truth].’”

It is interesting to note that nowhere in Bro. Savage’s journal does he report feelings of resentment or indignation at this treatment.  And there is no record that Bro. Savage responded with the normal human emotions of pride, rebellion, bitterness, or anger as he experienced public reproof and the realization that many had misunderstood his words as a lack of faith and a condemnation of the handcart system. Instead he said, “’Brethren and sisters, what I have said I know to be true, but seeing you are to go forward, I will go with you, will help you all I can, will work with you, will rest with you, will suffer with you, and if necessary, I will die with you.  May God in his mercy bless and preserve us.’”

Bro. Savage lived to prove his words true.  He showed optimism after the cattle were lost and the saints had yoked every cow they could find, including their cattle for beef and milk and young cattle:  “’Surely the hand of the Lord is with us yet.’” He grew weak and exhausted and hungry with the rest of the saints as their food began to wear out.  When he saw John Linford in an extremely weakened condition, he gave up his own very last ration of flour to the man. This was the last meal John Linford ate.

When the saints climbed Rocky Ridge, Levi Savage assisted many up that hill, working hard all the way.  Some would undoubtedly have perished were it not for the help he and others rendered. He buried the dead and worked tirelessly to aid the sick and slow, the grief-stricken and the frozen.  He said of the night after climbing Rocky Ridge:  “’Just before daylight [the wagons] returned, bringing all with them, some badly frozen, some dying, and some dead.  It was certainly heartrending to hear children crying for mothers and mothers crying for children.  By the time I got them as comfortably situated as circumstances would admit, . . . day was dawning.  I had not shut my eyes for sleep, nor lain down.  I was nearly exhausted with fatigue and want of rest.’”

“Levi Savage had the thankless task of overseeing the company’s slow, deteriorating animals.  On the night of October 31, after the rest of the company had crossed the Green River, the journal records, ‘Brother Savage, with ox and cow teams, did not get to camp this evening.’”

Levi Savage has been called one of the great heroes of the trek.  After being publicly criticized for his warning in Florence, his statements turned out to be true.  Yet there appears to be no record that he ever reacted with pride.  Instead, he humbly suffered in meekness alongside his fellow saints, accepting any assignment given him, even if unpleasant or undesirable, even at the cost of great personal risk and suffering.

Bro. Savage remained faithful until the end of his days.  His suffering did not end with the trek.  Once reunited with his little boy in Salt Lake, they had to live with his sister and her husband as Bro. Savage owned only the ragged clothes on his back.  At one point, he couldn’t even find a way to buy himself a new pair of pants. He eventually married Ann Cooper, a widow of the Willie company with two small girls.  Life was not easy for them and they lost much of what they managed to accumulate but Bro. Savage died “strong in the faith at nearly 91 years old.” (https://snohomishtrek2019.wordpress.com/levi-savage/)

I love Levi! His example to not be offended, meekly live the gospel, and serve where called inspires me.

Three 18 Year Old Boys (excerpt from the talk, “Four B’s for Boys” by Gordon B. Hinckley) 

“I should like to tell you of three eighteen-year-old boys. In 1856 more than a thousand of our people, some of them perhaps your forebears, found themselves in serious trouble while crossing the plains to this valley. Because of a series of unfortunate circumstances, they were late in getting started. They ran into snow and bitter cold in the highlands of Wyoming. Their situation was desperate, with deaths occurring every day.

President Young learned of their condition as the October general conference was about to begin. He immediately called for teams, wagons, drivers, and supplies to leave to rescue the bereft Saints. When the first rescue team reached the Martin Company, there were too few wagons to carry the suffering people. The rescuers had to insist that the carts keep moving.

When they reached the Sweetwater River on November 3, chunks of ice were floating in the freezing water. After all these people had been through, and in their weakened condition, that river seemed impossible to cross. It looked like stepping into death itself to move into the freezing stream. Men who once had been strong sat on the frozen ground and wept, as did the women and children. Many simply could not face that ordeal.

And now I quote from the record: “Three eighteen-year-old boys belonging to the relief party came to the rescue, and to the astonishment of all who saw, carried nearly every member of the ill-fated handcart company across the snowbound stream. The strain was so terrible, and the exposure so great, that in later years all the boys died from the effects of it. When President Brigham Young heard of this heroic act, he wept like a child, and later declared publicly, ‘that act alone will ensure C. Allen Huntington, George W. Grant, and David P. Kimball an everlasting salvation in the Celestial Kingdom of God, worlds without end.’” (Solomon F. Kimball, Improvement Era, Feb. 1914, p. 288.)

Mark you, these boys were eighteen years of age at the time. And, because of the program then in effect, they likely were holders of the Aaronic Priesthood. Great was their heroism, sacred the sacrifice they made of health and eventually of life itself to save the lives of those they helped.”

What a beautiful story of priesthood service and power!

Our pioneers were builders – of righteous causes, of trails, of places, of dreams, of untamed frontiers, and most importantly, of the kingdom of God. Yes, “honor, praise, and veneration to the founders we revere! List our song of adoration, blessed, honored pioneer!” (See hymn 36, “They the Builders of the Nation).

Unto all the world: Count me among those who love our pioneers. Dearly.