As Sisters in Zion Read online

  —Captain James G. Willie

  Isaac Campkin, a successful boot and shoemaker of Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, England, and his wife, Martha Webb Campkin, were baptized members of the Church in November 1850. Martha was described as a “quiet, dressy little woman” and Isaac was known to be an eloquent, “genial, tall, good looking man.”1

  Together Isaac and Martha had six children: Wilford George (born 1847), Rebecca (born 1849, but who died of diptheria at the age of three), Francessa (born 1850), Harriet (born 1852), Martha Ann (born 1854), and James Isaac (born 1855).

  Shortly before the birth of James Isaac, Isaac began preparations for the voyage to America and the journey to join the Saints in Salt Lake City. He sold his business and his home. A missionary serving in the area asked for a loan of six hundred dollars to help some other families immigrate and promised to return that money to the Campkin family in New York so they could purchase oxen, a wagon, and supplies for their journey west to Zion.

  The Campkins embarked from Liverpool with their five young children on the ship Caravan in February 1856. The 454 Saints on board were under the care and direction of Daniel Tyler.2 They arrived in New York on March 27, 1856. Neither the money nor the missionary awaited them.

  Since the European Saints were gathering in St. Louis, Missouri, to travel west together, the Campkins took a train to St. Louis. In England, Isaac had been ill with smallpox and had not felt well since, but after arriving in St. Louis, he developed a severe cold which quickly became pneumonia. He died unexpectedly three days later at the age of thirty-three.

  Isaac may have been planning to set up a shoe store in St. Louis to replenish his funds so he and his family could travel to Zion, but now Martha was suddenly left a widow with five children under eight years of age. And a poor widow at that. She had no wagon or supplies and no possible means of getting herself and her children to Zion. Her friends encouraged her to wait a season.

  Determined to fulfill Isaac’s dream of his family reaching Zion, Martha pressed forward and the bereaved little family found its way to Iowa City a few months later. There Martha spoke with Captain James Willie about her traveling west with his handcart company. He discouraged her immediately, pointing out that she couldn’t pull a handcart alone and that it would be useless for her to think of doing so.

  It was then that the Widow Campkin met Emily and Julia Hill, who were also traveling by themselves. The sisters offered to help pull the cart and tend the children, and the heaven-sent partnership was formed. With the offer of two strong, believing young women to help pull the handcart, Captain Willie relented and agreed to let Martha Campkin and her young children go with the company.

  What a unique partnership of sisters this became. To Martha, who had been mourning the sudden loss of her husband and attempting to simply survive and help her children to do the same, it was an answer to prayer—having these two eager and willing, physically strong young women come to her assistance. She now had help keeping her little family organized and moving along the trail with the rest of the company, to say nothing of the aid they would be in pulling the handcart and cooking the meals. By sharing the duties with her two new friends, the impossible became possible.

  Julia and Emily also benefited from the newfound association with Sister Campkin and her children. Although they had grown up in a large family, the three youngest brothers of Julia and Emily had died as infants. Missing their brothers and the rest of their beloved family, the girls soon bonded with the youngsters of the Campkin clan. They also became fast friends with Martha, and reveled in learning from her and her children.

  Years later, one of Martha’s granddaughters, Ida Young Thorne, wrote fondly of Julia and Emily Hill helping Martha pull the handcart and tend the family. Martha’s oldest daughter, Francessa, also recalled in her journal that Emily, a “poetess,” was very kind to the family, and that the sisters’ kindness would never be forgotten by the Campkin family.3

  The three women and five children were also assisted along the way by a young man named Thomas Young.

  Thomas had joined the Church as a young man in England and had gathered with the Saints to sail on the Caravan, the same ship as the Campkins. He became acquainted with the Campkin family on the ship and traveled with them by train to St. Louis. When Isaac’s health began to fail, Isaac asked Thomas if he would care for the family, and Thomas promised that he would. Thomas secured a job as a teamster for the Abraham Smoot wagon company, which joined with the Willie handcart company. Thomas befriended the little troupe of women and children and traveled the trail at the same time as the fourth handcart company (the Willie company), although sometimes on the opposite side of the river.4

  Julia and Emily Hill and Martha Campkin and her children were assigned to Levi Savage’s group of one hundred Saints, with Brother Savage also being the captain of the Perpetual Emigration Fund (PEF) wagons that accompanied the handcarts. Campkin family journals note that the older children walked most of the way, with Sister Campkin riding in a wagon only occasionally to care for the baby.5 The Willie company included “nearly 500 people, 120 handcarts, 25 tents (each sleeping 20 people), 5 supply wagons (carrying food and tents), 24 oxen (for pulling 4 of the wagons), 5 mules (4 were used to pull the other wagon), and 45 beef cattle and milk cows.”6

  Women and children traveling alone were never assigned to tents that men occupied, so the Campkins and the Hills were most likely assigned the same tent. A typical evening scene would usually involve Julia and Emily helping Martha feed the exhausted children and get them settled down for the evening. The women would then bake the bread the group would eat the next day. The ration of flour for the trek across Iowa was meager—ten ounces per person—but they were able to supplement that with wild game, meat from the cattle, and other supplies, most supplied by fellow pioneers with the means to procure the additional food.

  Evenings were also the time to make needed repairs to their equipment, which had been bounced and jostled on the rough trail throughout the day. Since most of the handcarts in the Willie company had been made from unseasoned wood, getting the handcarts ready each night for the next day’s travel became a burdensome chore, for men and women alike. A deep and long-lasting friendship was built between this widowed mother and the two single sisters as they worked side by side in the enormous task they had taken on.

  At the beginning of their journey, the Willie company was making good time. The Saints were strong in their resolve to get to Zion and with 1,300 miles of travel ahead, they were moving well and averaging fifteen miles a day. However, they encountered some opposition along their way in the early stages of their march. Captain Willie reported, “On our way considerable opposition was shown towards us by the people [of Iowa] from time to time, and threats of personal violence were sometimes made use of, though never carried into effect, because they could not find any just cause for complaint.”7

  On Sunday, July 20, Captain Willie and the other leaders preached to the Saints and filled the camp with the Spirit of heaven, but the following Monday night a mob of angry men surrounded the camp, swearing and cursing at the Mormons. The Saints doubled their guards, and the hostile men left without further incident, though tensions remained high.

  Five days later, on July 25, while camped at Muddy Creek, a group of men came with a warrant to “search the bottoms of our wagons for young women, who, as were alleged, were tied down there with ropes.”8 They found nothing amiss and left.

  While passing through these frontier towns, Julia and Emily also received mysterious, anonymous notes “setting forth the hardships and impossibilities of such a journey, and offering [them] inducements to stay.”9 Though the motives of the anonymous writers may have been sinister, it is true that a handcart pulled entirely by young women in that Victorian era would have been shocking. Public opinion being what it was in those days, many assumed the worst of the Mormons. Whatever t
he motive of the writers, the invitations were always disregarded, for the sisters paid them no heed.

  The handcart company’s experiences with those not of the Mormon faith were not always bad. A memorable and welcome event happened on July 31. As the company passed through Des Moines, Iowa, a generous man, Mr. Charles Good, kindly presented Captain Willie with fifteen pairs of well-made children’s boots.10 The entire company asked that “Good Charles Good,” as they called him, be blessed for his kindness. Perhaps some of Martha’s children were the grateful recipients of a pair of those precious and probably life-saving boots.

  Despite voiced concerns about the lateness of the season, on Saturday, August 16, part of the fourth handcart company, including the little band of sisters, pulled out from Florence, Nebraska, under the direction of Captain Willie. They were accompanied by eleven wagons, including Levi Savage’s Perpetual Emigration Fund wagons and some independently owned wagons. They journeyed a short distance to Little Pappea where they camped with Colonel Almon Babbitt and four of his wagons. The following day, August 17, the remainder of the wagons and carts under Captain Willie arrived, and the company spent time making needed repairs to their handcarts and tents before continuing on their journey.

  As the sisters and others in the pioneer company walked through fields of sunflowers or expanses of tall prairie grasses on the plains, it was not always a joyous, peaceful trek through a beautiful countryside. Thunderstorms would occasionally form, the heavens would open, and the Saints would be poured upon. To escape the torrential downpours, which could appear swiftly and leave just as quickly, sometimes the Saints would hunker down under the handcarts or under one of the wagons traveling with them, especially if there was thunder and lightning. With no other shelter near, children would huddle next to their mothers and whimper and cry as lightning tore through the sky accompanied by ominous booms of thunder. Other times, the group would simply trudge on through the dark and foreboding storms. Following the cloudbursts, the completely soaked Saints would spread their drenched belongings and wet clothes over the handcarts to dry as they moved forward.

  These Saints were used to the gentle rains, green hills, and majestic forests or to the noise and bustle of city life in their native countries, but this raw display of nature’s power was completely different. The immensity of the sky, the limitless horizon, the moaning of the wind, and the total lack of comfort or shelter was often overwhelming to the senses. The constant need to push or pull the cart; the unrelenting heat or cold, hunger, and thirst; and the numbing exhaustion that were their constant companions made the journey at times seem unending and the destination unreachable.

  And yet they persevered.

  Notes Chapter Two: “We’ll All Work Together”

  Epigraph: James G. Willie in Smith, “Faithful Stewards.”

  ^1. Thorne, et al., “Isaac Campkin and Martha Webb History.”

  ^2. Ririe, “Martha Webb Campkin Young.”

  ^3. Teresa Young Grover, letter to author, June 26, 2004.

  ^4. William Woodward in Smith, “Faithful Stewards.”

  ^5. Thorne, et al, “Isaac Campkin and Martha Webb History.”

  ^6. William Woodward in Olsen, Price We Paid, 71.

  ^7. Willie in Smith, “Faithful Stewards.”

  ^8. Willie, “Synopsis,” 11.

  ^9. Woodmansee in Crocheron, Representative Women of Deseret, 86.

  ^10. Willie, “Synopsis,” 10.

  Chapter Three

  “The Blessings of God on Our Labors We’ll Seek”

  Oh! little we knew of our troubles in store,

  Of the wilderness vast, that we had to pass o’er.

  And sometimes I think the provisions most wise

  That troubles ahead are oft hid from our eyes

  Unless our foreknowledge the evil could cure

  ’Tis best not to know all we have to endure.

  —Emily Hill Woodmansee

  By September, the company had reached the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. As they gazed up at the massive purple heights above them, Emily and Julia shivered with dread at what was going to be required. It was fall; the leaves were changing, and the nights were cold. John Chislett, who was a subcaptain over one hundred in the company and who had previously traveled in the Rockies, said: “The mountains [were] before us, [and] as we approached nearer to them, [they] revealed themselves to view mantled nearly to their base in snow, and tokens of a coming storm were discernible in the clouds which each day seemed to lower around us.”1

  The sisters were now pulling their cart up the foothills through soft, sandy footing. The wheels would drag through the loose soil, and it became more and more a necessity to push the handcart than to pull. In addition, apprehension about possible Indian attacks had spread throughout the group. On August 29, they came upon a camp of friendly Omaha Indians who sold buffalo meat to the company. “These Indians informed us of a murder, which had been committed on the 25th [of August] by the Cheyennes, on two of Col. Babbitt’s men and a Mrs. Wilson and her child. We subsequently passed by the scene of the murder and covered up the graves.”2

  This experience was unnerving to the entire company, but especially to those women who were the sole protectors for their families. The attack occurred just nine days after they had camped with Colonel Babbitt, a member of the Nauvoo Legion, at Little Pappea. Colonel Babbitt survived the ambush by the Cheyenne, but he himself was killed by them three weeks later at Fort Laramie.3

  Captain Willie expressed additional concern in his journal, noting: “On the morning of Thursday, 4th Sept. (being 265 miles west of Florence) we found that 30 of our oxen were missing. We stayed to search for them till the 6 and during our stay Col. Babbitt came up and reported that the Cheyennes had attacked a small Californian train and killed a woman.”4 In retaliation, the U.S. marshalls killed thirteen Cheyenne and confiscated their horses. This put the fourth handcart company right in the middle of the trouble. Emily, Julia, and Martha were constantly concerned and ever alert. The season was advancing, the weather was getting colder, thirty oxen and cattle were gone—possibly from a stampede—and the Cheyenne were unpredictable. A terrible storm at this time had washed away any hoofprints the thirty cattle had made, so the men were unable to follow their tracks and never located any of the missing animals, adding another element of difficulty to their journey.

  On Sunday, September 7, Captain Willie spoke to the concerned company and said, “The whole strength of the camp, that of men, women, children, and beasts, must be applied under the direction of the officers of the camp for the one object in view, the early resumption and speedy & final completion of the journey.”5

  As the cold nights and the gravity of these trials settled upon the Saints, the little band of sisters intensified their resolve to get to the Valley. Their prayers and petitions to God became more fervent and specific as they contemplated the storms and mountains that lay between them and the Zion they sought. Awed by the immensity and ruggedness of the Rocky Mountains, with each step increasing in height and ominous danger and each mountain a foreshadow of the granite monster behind it, this was a time that their testimonies were tempered in the fire of adversity. The sisters were sustained in response to their powerful pleadings to see the city of Saints with their mortal eyes.6

  The burning desire of Emily, Julia, and Martha to get to the Valley kept them moving through the storms and trials. They had learned they needed each other. Alone they might have failed, but together they hoped they could succeed and live. But there was still much to be endured.

  Because of extremely unfortunate miscommunication in instructions to the supply wagons sent out from Salt Lake City to help the handcart companies, no supply wagons had yet gone far enough to reach the Willie company. When relief wagons were sent from Salt Lake City in response to President Brigham Young’s p
lea on October 4 to bring these Saints in from the plains, those rescuers actually met supply wagons returning to the Valley, still full of flour and other life-sustaining goods.

  By October 19, the Saints in the fourth handcart company had exhausted all their resources; that day the last ration of flour was issued. Their strength was depleted, and many saw death on the plains as an absolute certainty. Julia, who had struggled throughout the journey, was in true peril.

  In the early afternoon a fierce wind began and the first winter snow began to fall. It was at that moment that an advance party from the relief wagons from Salt Lake City arrived. Stephen Taylor, Joseph A. Young, Cyrus Wheelock, and Abel Garr had been sent ahead of the relief wagons to find the handcart companies still on the plains and let them know more help was on the way. Many in the handcart company had already died of exposure and exhaustion, and the pitiful survivors of the Willie company were camped next to the frozen Sweetwater River, surrounded by a sea of swirling snow, and fainting because of hunger and fatigue. The pioneers had given all they could give when shouts rang out in the evening, “The rescuers have come!”

  But the end was not yet in sight. In order to travel so quickly, this small group of rescuers in a light wagon did not have an abundance of provisions with them. They brought with them a little flour, some onions, and hope. Then they were on their way, as they had been charged, to find the Martin handcart company.

  Joseph A. Young, one of the rescuers, had served a mission to England and recognized Emily. Appalled at her condition, he gave her a small onion. Emily did not eat it immediately but carried it away. Later that night she came upon a seriously ill man lying close to a fire. Emily gave him the onion, and he later said that this act of kindness saved his life.7

  Joy flooded the souls of the handcart company in the realization that God had not forgotten them. Relief had been sent to succor and comfort those who would have otherwise surely perished on the desolate, snow-covered, high plains of Wyoming.