Colleen and I helped with the activities on our Stake Pioneer Trek this weekend. Colleen looks the part, I had a hard time finding authentic western garb.
After the first night the families assembled for the Silent Walk through Martin's Cove.
The whole group was very reverent as we walked over the hallowed ground where many members of the Martin Handcart Company died.
At the top of the Cove we reflected on the events that took place there.
Then we picked up the handcarts and returned to the trail.
We reenacted the Crossing of the Sweetwater. After the punishing crossing of the Platte just a few days before, many in the company could not face the icy waters and had to be carried across.
Our experience was much milder than the conditions the pioneers encountered.
Standing in for Captain James Allen, I called out all of the men for the Mormon Battalion which left the women to pull the handcarts. (A little historical license was used since the Battalion occurred ten years before the Willie and Martin Handcart companies.)
We led the men to the top of a hill where we listened to a talk on Honoring Women. Then we lined the trail and watched in silence and respect as the women pulled that difficult hill. This was the high point of the trip for many of us.
We then reunited the families and trekked five miles into a stiff high plains wind to get some small sense of what it meant to be a pioneer.
Even with the wind, the land is beautiful this time of the year.
I did the trek in memory of Elizabeth Green, sister of Harriett Ann Green, wife of Mark Earnshaw. Elizabeth, age 23, was a member of the Martin Handcart Company. She survived the ordeal, arrived in Salt Lake in November 1855, married Henry Arnold in the Endowment House in 1857 and had a family of nine children.
2 comments:
I, too, will be going on the Martin's Cove Trek in honor of Elizabeth Green. She is not a direct ancestor of mine but married my great-great-grandfather, Henry Arnold. My understanding is that she traveled with his aunt, who died along the way and she took the body in the handcart to SLC and notified Henry of her passing. He was so impressed by this that he later married her. (I can't remember where I read this. I hope I am telling the story straight. Does this match up with what you know about her?) I would love to read a full history of her Handcart experience if you have one.
I found out that the ground was frozen, and so Henry Arnold's Aunt, Mary Harper, was wrapped in a blanket and left on the side of the trail. Elizabeth did notify Henry of this, and she was taken into his home and nursed back to health.
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